


Five Times Peter and Micky Fooled Around...And One Time They Didn't

by Lauren_StDavid



Series: Early Beechwood [1]
Category: The Monkees, The Monkees (TV)
Genre: Early Days, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends With Benefits, Imbolc, M/M, No Strings Attached, Recreational Drug Use, Slight Mike/Micky, Slight Mike/Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2020-09-26 14:35:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20391283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauren_StDavid/pseuds/Lauren_StDavid
Summary: Elements of their rl personalities have seeped in.I realize the characters' speech is a bit ahead of its time and they're the same age here as they are in the later series... A wizard did it and ran away?





	1. Late Summer, 1964

**Author's Note:**

> Elements of their rl personalities have seeped in.
> 
> I realize the characters' speech is a bit ahead of its time and they're the same age here as they are in the later series... A wizard did it and ran away?

Peter, already half at ease on the new stage area at the back of the living room, must have missed the sound of the front door—or the deck door, or the stained glass door, and wasn’t there a door, albeit blocked off, in the storage closet?—but heard _something_ so didn’t startle when Micky’s head appeared high above where he sat. It started off peeping over the top of the screen at the foot of the stage, then slid to peer around the side, a hand gripping the edge either side of it. It was followed by his shoulders then chest and body, when Micky righted himself

If Peter hadn’t heard something, he might have thought he was imagining Micky, suited and booted like that. “Hey,” he said, glad the album hadn’t got to the tracks he most wanted to listen to. He hated having to lift the needle mid-groove, especially on a new record.

“Hi.” Micky eyed the throw and the pillows and…stuff. “Is it your night for…” He waved a hand.

Peter couldn’t remember all the rules and regulations governing their house-sharing, which ranged from who did which chores or had the right to which space when—and probably how—to the way they _decided_ on said rules and regulations. What he did know was that it made the pad a little like his boarding school, or his college dorm, and that Mike needed to loosen up.

“Um, seems I signed up for the rec room. Or got signed up for it.”

“Huh?”

Yeah, Micky wasn’t used to him yet. Or him Micky, Peter supposed.

“Heh, well, I’ll go—”

“It’s cool.” Peter ignored Micky’s thumb-over-shoulder gesture and inched a pillow out in invitation. He considered Micky. “You look…”

“Square. Square like a cube?”

What was that, some sort of scientist pastiche? Micky actually looked kinda dragged out. And bummed out. “Clean. We all clean up well.” No choice, when they practically had inspection parade.

“No choice,” Micky echoed.

Them jumping into one another’s thoughts still freaked Peter out a little…which didn’t mean he didn’t like it. “Dinner with family, right?” He pulled his guitar into his lap.

“And Mom’s new boyfriend.” Micky scoffed at himself. “Man friend.”

“Gentleman caller? Nothing. Was okay?”

“It…coulda been worse.” Micky considered. “I mean, there were no killer robots or crazed space aliens attacking the restaurant.”

Peter grinned. “You sound disappointed,” came his comment as his fingers strayed to the guitar strings to pick out the song playing.

Micky shrugged.

“Bring anything back?” Peter thought he’d be in the mood for some sweet dessert or other…later.

“Yeah. I know the rule.”

Okay, the ones in place to guard against one or more of them starving to death were…well-meant, Peter supposed. Fine, they were all well-intentioned. But, even so… “C’m here.” When Micky, looking puzzled, obeyed and bent down to him, Peter reached up to loosen Micky’s tie for him. It made Micky grin and scrub a hand through his hair, freeing it a little of its ironed-and-gelled-into-submission straightness. “Better?”

“Yeah. I’ll just…”

And like an escape artist, Micky stood and was gone. Peter switched off the lamp and lit candles and an incense stick, then arranged his music notation notebook and pencils and instruments to have them to hand should inspiration strike. He liked this indoor deck space, newly restored and opened up, its step rebuilt. What had it been, once upon a time? Dining nook? Indoor conservatory? Well, they’d hardly be indulging in gourmet dining experiences, but the natural light would be good for growing…plants there. But yeah, stage, bandstand, podium—the debate over its name was ongoing—the space was boss. He liked leaning against the back wall of windows or sitting on the low bench seat there to get the great view over the beach and ocean, even at night.

A shuffling slapping noise alerted him to his house-mate’s return, Micky looking more familiar in frayed shorts, a loose Hawaiian shirt and go-aheads. “Will it bug you if I see what’s on TV?” he asked. “I’ll keep the volume real low.”

“Come sit. I said it’s cool.” Peter shoved a couple of pillows farther over. “That screen’s just there because that’s where it is, right now. It can be elseplace.” He had no objection to hanging out with Micky. Ah. Except… With Micky stopping dead and staring like that, Peter was curious how this would play out.

“Oh. You’re…” Sitting carefully at a slight distance, Micky pointed at the baggie in Peter’s hands.

He didn’t suppose Micky was totally straight. He’d been at college, okay, technical school, so must have been exposed to…stuff he hadn’t been at home. And he’d grown up right here in the Valley, for God’s sake, not in the place where Jesus lost his boots, if Peter translated literally.

“New LP?”

_Nice switch._ Peter grinned. “Yeah. We got paid. Hence the celebratory dope.”

“Don’t you need a pipe?”

“Not for this amount. But quality, not quantity…” He’d gotten a decent strain. Would’ve liked more than a dime bag, of course. But needs must. “When the devil drives.”

“Yeah, we didn’t get paid that much. Good to get anything though—I figured we’d just be getting a meal or even the party leftovers, you know? And I wonder if they’ll have us play at the wedding too? Although…I’m not sure Shelley’s ready to get married, or even engaged.”

Mrs. Purdy’s daughter must’ve come on to Micky as well as Davy, then, Peter figured. Liked brunets. Had she to Mike? Three out of three? On the whole, Peter thought…not. Micky and Davy were more…_approachable_, would be a neutral word. Micky was looking everywhere but at what Peter was doing and opening his mouth for another avoidance tactic, so Peter short-cut. “Are you okay with me smoking up?”

“God, I’m not a kid!” Micky erupted. He blew out a breath within seconds. “Sorry, man. That was heavy of me.”

“That what they’ve been laying on you all evening?”

“Huh. Yeah. A bit. Whatever.” Micky shrugged.

“Want to rap about it?”

“Now?”

“No time like the now.”

“With you?”

Peter understood the question. As a group, none of them had exactly gone in for deep and meaningfuls, to his knowledge. That should change, he felt. “No one else is here. Davy’s on a date and Mike’s working a shift at Pop’s.” Or so it said on the chart, the oh-so-organized _Who’s Where When_ _Doing What Why and For How Long_ board he’d itched to write ridiculous things on when he first saw it. Okay, still did. His acquaintance with it was recent, after all.

“Oh, don’t wanna bum you out, man.”

“I can take it.” Peter shrugged out of his shirt. “Lay it on me, as they say. Did you get the coiffeur critique?”

“Huh?” Now Micky was too busy looking at what Peter was doing to listen.

‘“Are you a boy or a girl?”’ Peter assumed the smug, self-congratulatory tone of everyone who thought they were the first person to make that ‘joke’. He shook his bangs down into his eyes.

“Oh, yeah. With the opinion of this guy’s family divided between ‘mop top’ and ‘wet mop’.”

“Copy that. The last debate mine gave rise to was ‘Long hair: fag or commie? Discuss.’ And opinion was about a fifty-fifty split.” To which he’d replied, “Huh. Just like me, then.”

“Yeah. I hear you.” Micky relaxed a little. “I got plenty of ‘long-haired weirdo’ stuff. Being one, living with some…”

“Did you get the whole ‘bad influence’ crap?” Peter took a big swallow of his beer and passed the bottle over.

“Oh. Thanks…” Micky’s swig was smaller. He shrugged, which Peter interpreted as _yes_, then giggled. Peter liked that sound. He liked Micky’s voice in general. His real one, and even the ones he put on to do gags with. And when he sang… _Like_ didn’t cover it. “The phrase ‘juke joint’ _might_ have been used.”

“Whoa.” Eyebrows raised, Peter considered how closely their pad fitted that epithet. An informal establishment, yep. Music? Sure. Dancing and drinking? Some. Gambling…well, they had enough wagers and trade-offs running at any given time, although rarely enough money between the four of them for it to change hands.

“Well, we do have a juke box.” Micky pointed at it, to their left. “So you can see how these rumors get started, right?”

“But it’s the other way round. The bars weren’t called that because of having a juke box—the music machine was called after the word ‘juke’.” It was Creole, he thought, and it meant rowdy.

“Yeah, I told them that was race language. And that none of us were black, I didn’t think.” Micky giggled again.

“Those squares.” Peter tutted. “Hey, they could have used the synonym ‘barrelhouse’, seeing as we do have furniture made from barrels!” Joint rolled and lit, he took his first draw, closing his eyes in pleasure. Exhaling after a good while, he sank in to the sensation of any tension in his head starting to loosen. He’d been scrupulous to angle his head away and up, but Micky must be getting something of a second-hand hit. Pity Mike wasn’t here. A guy that good-looking shouldn’t be that uptight. Do him good to get wasted.

“Well, wasn’t all wasted.”

Peter almost jumped at Micky’s pronouncement, his echoing of Peter’s thought. This was…probably something they should look into. Micky bounced up and away and jumped back. Up and down, like one of those spring toys.

“I got the rest of my posters from my old room.” Down and out one unfurled as he unrolled it.

“Neat.” Peter held one corner to see it. “I dig the Marx Brothers too.”

“Oh, man! They’re the most. I’m a bug on comedy,” Micky confessed.

“No!” Peter deadpanned. He patted the pillow, hoping Micky would relax as he sat again. “Want a toke? It should be puff, puff, pass, not puff, puff, puff.”

“I say, bad form, what?”

Peter blinked. He almost saw Micky in a black frock coat and top hat and starched white shirt, matching the voice he’d used.

“I’d like to, Pete, but like I said, I promised Mom I wouldn’t touch a cigarette after the way—after we found out Dad had a bad heart and what smoking had done and stuff.”

“Hmm.” Peter considered. “Well, there’s no tobacco in this, so technically it isn’t a cigarette. But yeah. That’s a technicality. Okay… You know the hippie creed?”

“Peace and love to all?” Micky replied, frowning.

“Okay, fair point. Maybe I mean the motto, then. It’s ‘I can make a bong out of anything’. Also, in my case, a pipe…” He pulled the top from his wooden recorder and held the mouthpiece between his lips, his finger covering the window, to show Micky what he meant. If Micky was interested. Micky…was. At least, he scooted nearer, to lean sideways against the back wall, like Peter was, cross-legged like him, facing him.

Grinning, Peter took as big a hit as he could and formed a seal around the mouthpiece slit and window, leaning close so Micky could suction his lips around the cylinder that was the other end, then blew the smoke down to him. Their noses were almost touching—Peter had never appreciated the exact shape of Micky’s before. That it was short and stubby, as if designed to deliberately contrast with his own long, curved one, amused him. _Snub and ski-slope, both turned up at the tip._

“_Ohhh._” Micky’s exhalation was long and measured, and, surprising Peter, he didn’t cough or splutter. “_Nice,_” he breathed, a smile taking over his face.

“One way of putting it.” Peter leaned against the cool of the glass, which reminded him. “But it can get you overheated if you’re not used to it. You might want to slip your shirt off.”

Micky, who’d slumped against the windows too, opened one eye at him. “Oh, real slick there, Big Pete. That one of Davy’s lines?”

Peter got it and chuckled. “No.”

“Does it work? Like, save time?” Micky pulled a lascivious face and rubbed his hands.

“More than you’d think.” Peter studied him in the candle light, through the smoke. Micky had almond-shaped eyes and all the sections of his face—his eyebrows, his eyelids, his nose, his mouth and his chin—were riffs on that shape. That was how Peter would draw him. Peter swiveled his head to get a view of the different planes and angles of Micky’s face as it went into profile. When he looked at the whole body again, Micky had taken his shirt off. Peter examined it. The garment had faded, but the colors and patterns were vibey. It had a story, Peter could tell.

“You’re ripped, Peter.”

“Hardly.” Peter blew out smoke and examined the joint left.

Micky finished comparing his own chest and arms to Peter’s. “I mean—”

“I know. Kidding. But you’ve got muscle definition. You don’t need to pack it on.” Peter indicated the recorder part Micky still held. “That’s called the head joint. Neat, eh?”

Micky’s explosion of laughter shook the podium.

“And last week, I was cleaning my soprano recorder…no, that’s not the funny part.” Peter snickered too though. “And Davy asked, ‘Whatyerdoingthere, Pee’ah?’ so I said I’d cleaned and was polishing the head joint, barrel, and bell end and he just collapsed on the floor in hysterics, man! He got me to repeat what I was doing to the foot section of the recorder and just about managed to say, ‘So yer polishing yer bell end, mate?’ and…” He had to support Micky, the way they slid into each other.

“I don’t get it!” Micky guffawed.

“Me neither,” Peter hiccupped. He moved to turn the record over. His favorite tracks were on this side. “Hey, you’re genned up on electronics. What if I want to play the stereo through an amp?” He indicated the nearest. They stored their instruments away but left these out.

“You’ll need an RCA cable to connect the record player to the amp’s auxiliary adaptor.” Micky shoved his hand into his pocket and produced a coil of thick black cable with a yellow end.

“And you’ll need another hit.” Peter couldn’t see his improvised pipe—it must’ve rolled away. “C’m here.” He got Micky to copy him in making a tight tunnel with his hands in front of his mouth. He didn’t want to issue the instructions of, “When I blow, you suck,” because it would lead to more fits, so just ripped a massive hit and blew the smoke down the tube, trusting Micky would figure it out.

Micky was silent when Peter went to fiddle with the output and the lead. Well, the pot was strong. Peter gave him another hit and when the next song boomed out through the guitar amp, Micky’s eyes widened, and he stretched out slowly, like a tree toppling, to fall and lie flat on his face. He just lay, face down, as flat as the wooden boards he landed on.

_He’s good and high, but low too._ Peter sniggered. He rubbed Micky’s back. This was a totally gone song and Peter tapped out the bassline beats on Micky’s spine, enjoying the feel of the soft skin over the bony knobs. He wondered if Micky could feel the overthud of the bass up and down his spinal cord. Yeah, should have used the guitar amp. Next time.

When the song finished, Peter moved to turn the sound down a little and Micky stirred. He sat, a look of amazement on his face. “The music vibrated though me!” he eventually said, his tone one of wonder.

“Imaging doing acid—it’s like being _inside_ the music!” Peter enthused. “You don’t just hear—you can see and touch the notes.”

“_Cooool._” Micky shuffled and after two tries leaned back against the window. “Cool,” he commented again turning his pink face to the colder glass, adding, “I think I’m half-wasted.” His head lolled a little on his neck and he grinned bigger than ever.

“So don’t stop midway!” Peter moved in for Micky to take another hit, pausing when Micky twitched and rolled his shoulders and nothing else.

“My hands won’t work,” he lamented, unable to raise them or make them cup.

“Mouth to mouth?” Peter only half meant it, but Micky nodded, so Peter took the last hit from the joint before he ground it out and pressed his lips against Micky’s. Micky’s eyes opened wide along with his mouth, under the guidance of Peter’s, and he inhaled the smoke Peter blew in. He pulled away a little to breathe, right from the diaphragm, his breath traveling slowly up his chest to catch in his throat when he gave a strained swallow. He moved forward again, still not looking away.

Still—if not more—curious about how Micky would react, Peter tilted in at the same time as Micky did, and their lips met again, this time with no smokescreen between them. It couldn’t be called a kiss, Peter decided. There was no movement, no give and take, no lead and follow, no call and response. It was more like verifying something about the first contact. Or the _entire_ thing, like if it had occurred and how it felt. Gentle, warm, and less dry than he might have thought. What did Micky taste like? He wished he didn’t feel slightly anesthetized—he’d bet he’d enjoy this straight. _Straight._ _Ha._ The thought tickled him.

“Huh.” Micky’s head hit the glass window when he pulled away. He didn’t seem to notice. “You got soft lips, like a chick’s. I didn’t know guys did. Do I got?”

Peter touched them, with what he hoped was a gentle stroke of a fingertip, not a poke. “Yeah, you do.” He traced the shape of Micky’s pug nose, then used his other hand to do his own, for comparison. Micky followed the movements of Peter’s fingers until his eyes crossed, making Peter chuckle again.

“Your hair’s so shiny!” Micky shouted, his too-loud voice making Peter double over, laughing. “Not just now, all of a sudden, I mean. That would be weird. I mean in general. Every day. I sorta imagine it as _slippery_, you know?”

“Like grease, or more like wet glass? I don’t think so, either way.” Peter bent for Micky to stroke from his crown to the end of his bangs. He thought Micky skimmed his nose too. “Chicks dig it,” he admitted, making his bangs tangle in his eyelashes.

“What about guys?”

“Yeah, most chicks dig guys.” Peter kept his voice solemn. He waited to see what Micky wanted to ask.

“Are you…” Micky seemed to lose his train of thought, especially when Peter petted his head for him. Not as nice as it could be, Peter decided, with all the product in it. But Mick’s natural curls must be soft and nice to touch. “Do you…” Micky’s return to his line of questioning made him jump.

“Sometimes,” Peter answered, figuring that described his attitude to most any situation, so served as a reasonable answer to any question Micky might put to him. He wondered if now was one of those times. Would Micky— And would he? Interesting to ponder.

“What would happen if you smoked that bit?” Micky’s voice was still loud and now sounded overheated.

“The roach? How?”

“Inside the next joint,” Micky whispered.

“Like recycling. Huh.” Peter was intrigued enough to try it, using up the rest of his stash. “Ready for more?” he asked, choosing another record.

“Yeah. Hey, I’ll go halves with you.” Micky pointed at Peter’s hands. “I don’t got much moolah, but next I get… Or I can do your chores for you.”

“Jesus, no, man!” Peter was horrified. “That’s like, servitude or hooking or something. Just get the next stash, okay?” He held the joint to Micky’s lips for him to draw from. Why hadn’t they thought of that in the first place? The roach inside made it stronger, he thought. At least, Micky coughed, this time.

“What’s the wildest place you ever had sex?” Micky asked suddenly.

“What, on the body?” Peter frowned, trying to puzzle that one out.

“No, man, the _place_ place.”

“Oh. Probably…Venezuela.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, I speak a little Spanish, right, but the accent there, and the words, chopped short or bits dropped out? And it’s half Italian. So…I said some things I hadn’t intended to. Which led to things being…far out.”

Their conversation meandered on for miles in the way Peter loved. They lounged, sometimes propping themselves up on their elbows, sometimes rolled onto their sides. And if Peter got flashes of silken cushions and oriental rugs, them wearing headdresses and flowing robes, on low couches, well, that was groovy and intriguing. Peter thought a little when Micky asked how he felt about playing less guitar now, when he preferred it to playing bass, and eventually replied that he’d live with it.

“The banjo,” came his ready answer to what was his favorite instrument. “The first time I held it, it fit my hands, you know? My arms, my chest, my hip… Just filled a gap I didn’t even know was there. Like I’d been waiting for it.”

“Or it you.”

That sounded profound and Peter sat, cross-legged, to show Micky some chords, difficult without having the instrument to hand, but not impossible. Micky opened Peter’s notation book.

“I always thought songwriters composed at the piano. Like in Hollywood movies,” Micky confessed. “Be great when yours comes.”

“It’s a Vox Continental. An organ. Not the same as a piano, but yeah, still good.” When he missed playing a bigger keyboard, he could always go to Dunstan’s, on Pico. Larry was cool about musicians hanging out and playing the instruments in his store, and it was only a half-hour walk, now Peter lived here at the pad. “But different songs come to me on different instruments, dig? And in phrases, most musical, but some lyrics.” He flicked through his notation notebook and showed Micky some bars of music and some lines of lyrics that had been floating around for years, some since high school.

“Waiting.”

Micky got it, Peter saw, even though he was more kinetic, then visual, rather than auditory. Songs would come to him first via his lived experiences, presenting to him as a series of images that he’d burn to describe and would do so in poems which he’d set to music. That should be interesting. Peter hoped he was around Micky long enough to witness it, maybe even play on those songs.

He sat back when Micky cued up some singles on the juke box and showed him what the San Fernando Valley rock and roll band he’d played in had been like. Peter saw the tight pants, and the long jacket with its turned-up collar, but couldn’t understand the hair until Micky fetched an old promo flyer.

“A Pompadour!” Peter almost ripped the paper in half, he was shaking so hard with laughter. “Man, most of your earnings must’ve gone on hair cream!”

“Least I got earnings—what d’you get, playing in the Village?” Micky chortled. “Can see it now, peaked cap, suspenders over undershirt, cabin-boy pants from Goodwill, sandals…”

“Hey! I was barefoot!” Peter protested. “Usually got more tips that way.”

“What, like, ‘wear shoes, kid’?” Micky had taken up the acoustic and was noodling along with Peter to Peter’s new album, now playing again. He sat straight at the next song. “Oh. Romantic ballad…” He leaned his face close to Peter, like it was a thing they did.

“For the entire song?”

Micky shrugged.

“Tongues?”

Micky shrugged again and it turned out to be a yes to the first and a no to the second before they separated and were lounging again, on their backs this time, looking out at the night, to roll in together for another press of lips one song later.

“Huh,” said Peter, catching up with what they were doing. It didn’t seem like an element of them getting to know each other, but felt organic, natural, part and parcel of their conversation, one of the ways in which they hung out, passed the time. He liked Micky’s slight warmth and slight scent. He smelled of a familiar-enough cologne, powdery, barber-shop-like, one that reminded Peter of being packed in a car with a load of college buddies of an evening.

There was no tension, no long looks, no sliding of hands, no grasping, no positioning. While there might have been a sliding of mouths, there was no slipping of tongues, no nipping of lips. It was curiously, interestingly unerotic. There were no gasps, no groans, no moans. He sat to peer down at Micky’s chest. A slight rising and falling, perhaps. And dilated pupils, although that could be due to the low light.

Peter nodded, pleased with his observations. There was no demanding. Maybe a slight asking and answering. Definitely no staking of claims. No surrendering or conquering. Perhaps a slight element of exploring, but nor necessarily of each other. More of…what could lie between them. Maybe of boundaries? _Possibilities?_

“Man, you think a lot. Such busy, deep thoughts,” Micky complained. “And you keep it all in. What you show on the surface, it’s… What? What’s that you’re thinking now?”

“Your mom’s cool, Mick.” They’d only met a couple times, but it was enough to tell. She’d delivered groceries along with Micky and had taken note of their food preferences and sent cooked meals back with Mick when he’d been back to the family home since. And she’d been okay with him moving there in the first place or, at least, hadn’t forbade him. She’d spoken about having them all over for dinner, as soon as a time suiting everyone could be found. Peter thought he recalled talk of this evening being a possibility, until this meet-the-other’s-folks occasion had transpired.

He gestured at Micky. “And, going by you, your dad must’ve been okay too. So, I doubt your mom would get seriously involved with a guy whose family, his kids or whatever, were like that.”

“Apple, tree, you mean?” Micky inquired.

“Uh-huh. She’ll see him for what he is. I bet she has, after tonight.”

“Oh.”

The evening stretched while Micky pondered this. After a while he rolled from his back to his side to drop a kiss onto Peter’s temple, and Peter, who’d been lying eyes closed, went to sit at the same time, so the meeting was a hard bump. It was more funny than painful, at the time of impact, though.

“Tell me some more potiquette?” Micky suddenly requested.

Peter chuckled. “What’ve we covered so far in dope protocol?” He nodded when Mick recapped. “Right. Let me think… Uh-huh. So that you don’t burn your clothes, or anyone else’s—”

“Pete, if this is where you say it’s best to get nekkid—”

“Ash before you pass,” Peter finished, in between bubbles of laughter, miming tapping the ash from the end of a joint, if they’d had another one, into whatever passed for an ashtray before handing it on.

“Ash before you pass the grass,” Micky riffed. “Or, if you’re Davy, arsh before you parse the grarse.”

“Not harrf,” Peter responded, and the stage wobbled under them with their giggling.

“More things should rhyme. To remember them, dig?”

“Like slogans, you mean? Like in advertising?” Peter held up his bare wrist. ‘“It takes a licking and keeps on ticking.’ Until you lose it, that is.”

“Yeah…but for things guys _really_ need. I sent in a slogan for a competition, but it didn’t win.”

“Really? What was the product? Tell me, Mick!” Peter coaxed, when Micky tried to cry off. He sat. “Okay, I’ll guess. Rubbers?”

“Yeah!” Micky sat too, amazed. “It was ‘Sex can be unexpected, so always be protected.’”

“That’s great!” Peter praised. “Much better than ‘Put it on before you put it in.’ It’s the military slogan, on their health and safety posters. But what was the prize, like a year’s supply?”

“Yeah!” Micky cried again. “What’s yours? Come on, quick!”

“Hmm. I don’t know… ‘Fits like a glove: always keep one to hand?’ Hey, rubbers are tricky!” Peter defended himself against the deserved raspberries and booing. “What about products before you get to that stage?”

“Like…”

“Breath mints.” Peter cleared his throat. ‘“Have one to eat, and your mouth’s kissing sweet.’”

“Not bad!” Micky gave a slow nod and declared, ‘“Feel the tingle before you mingle.”’

That could be condoms too. Peter recalled a few instances of definitely feeling a tingle on contact with the latex. “Okay…what if you’ve been drinking beer? ‘Disguise the smell of hooch before you smooch?’”

‘“Suck on this before you kiss!”’ Micky spluttered.

“We should write these down!” His stomach hurting from chuckling so much, Peter patted the floor both sides of him, trying to find his pencils and something to write on.

***

Mike came in a little later, having walked home from Pop’s, not having gas money and being nervous about riding a pushbike along the Santa Monica roads in the dark. He didn’t really mind walking, using the time for thinking, or composing, or observing, although the latter was harder to do in the dark. So mostly thinking then, about the four of them, their different personalities, but mainly about their new living situation, and how it was shaping—or being shaped. He didn’t exactly think he’d done a sterling job of things so far and especially not now that all four of them were moved in.

The pad was dark too, except for a spluttering candle on the podium, just about illuminating Peter, in Micky’s Hawaiian shirt, and Micky, in a striped orange sweater. They were sleeping on their backs, feet to feet, Peter’s head orientated toward the bathroom and Micky’s pointed toward the deck door. Mike took a minute to take in the picture the two made, together like that, like they’d conked out in the middle of a sleepover. The throw from the den was rumpled, its fringe lying across their bare feet. Mike plucked it up and shook it out, settling it gently over their lower halves.

He went to blow out the candle and his foot slipped on a sheet of paper sticking out from under Peter’s arm, making it crinkle. ‘“Not Kismet but KissBreath OR POSSIBLY KissMints: turn halitosis into halleluiah,”’ he read from it, puzzled. Looking around, he spied a second sheet of paper, this one closer to Micky, and picked that up too. “Just one spray and you can French the night away.’ What in the world?”

Mystified, he grabbed a third piece of paper and angled it toward the candlelight. “One spot on the tongue and you’re god all night long.”’

“_Good._”

Micky’s voice made Mike jump, especially as Micky looked asleep.

“_Good_ all night long.”

“Mick…” Yeah, he was sleeping.

“Hey.” Peter woke and swung to a sitting position. “Okay? Oh. I know it’s not Micky’s evening, for this space. But could he count as my guest? I’ll go and hang whatever it is we’re supposed to hang wherever we’re meant to if you remind me what it is and where we should…stick it.” Oh, yuk. That reference to his last exchange with Mike was uncool. As a pacifist, he should be smoothing over bumps of irritation, not picking at them so they never scabbed and healed. “Look,” he said, at the same time Mike did, their voices blending.

“No, I’m sorry,” Mike continued, as if answering or interrupting Peter. He sat in between Peter and Micky, his long legs bent high to rest almost under his chin and his long arms around them. “Things… Learning to live together like this—I know I’m… I’m just trying to find a balance, ya know?”

“Between…?”

“Complete chaos and total control,” came from Micky.

“Oh. It’s okay. I get it.” Peter thought he did, anyway, and admired Mike’s humility. “We’re all learning. And we’re inchoate, yet.”

“I dunno what that means,” Mike admitted. What he did know was that Peter was cleverer than him, better read than him and more educated than him.

“Incoherent,” threw in Micky. “Like, does anyone understand Pete?”

Peter snatched the papers from Mike’s hands, scrunched them into a ball and threw it at Micky. Micky, still lying supine, caught it and threw it up and over, knocking Mike’s hat off, then fell back to sleep. If he’d ever been awake.

“So that happened,” Peter said, in summary of more than the paper-throwing. “Want me to help you carry Micky up to bed? Hey, and remind me again how you—sorry, _we_—chose roommates and rooms?”

“Kinda like this.” Grinning, looking younger and less like he had a weight on his shoulders, Mike scooped up the balled papers and threw them at him. They bounced off Peter’s head and onto Micky.

Peter laughed in amazed delight.

“Ooh, you’ve gone and done it now.” Micky scrambled to his feet, looking surprised to find he was swaying a little. “Monkee fight! Soon as I find my water gun—”

“Oh, what is this Monkee fi— I just got in from work, guys!” Mike protested.

“And I’m starving.” Peter thought. “Okay. Let’s split the slice of apple pie Micky brought—”

“And the leftover bread rolls and hard cheese I brought back,” Mike added. “Grate the cheese with a little cilantro and hot sauce and we got ourselves gourmet oven toasties.”

“And then—”

“Then I’ll play my new album again.” Peter cut Micky off. “We didn’t hear it properly and I bet Mike’d like to listen.” He passed the sleeve over to him.

“Know what that sounds like?” Micky, shuffling in the direction of the icebox, called over his shoulder. He seemed perfectly at ease with having been sitting and lying there kissing with Peter. Maybe he forgot? _Or…maybe he thinks that’s what you do when you smoke pot! _wondered Peter, intrigued and enchanted, and grooving on the rhyme he’d just made. “It sounds like a plan,” Micky finished.

“It…sure does. Good one, too,” Mike agreed. His smile, shy though it was, lit up his face.

Peter…approved. Of everything. And looked forward to more.


	2. Early Spring, 1965

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just really silly.

What had woken him? Peter lay still for a moment, cataloging the possible causes and wishing not for the first time he’d gotten the upstairs bedroom. Downstairs tended to be noisier in general, even though they weren’t directly on the street but had a buffer area. Davy? Was snoring, as usual, but Peter was used to that, just as Davy was used to—had he but known it—Peter grabbing for the long pole he kept under his bed, and poking Davy with it, when the snuffles went from wheezes to snorts.

He reached for it now, just in case, although Davy was far from the gargle stage. Contact made, Davy grunted and swatted and moved away from the intrusion…turning from his back to his side. He only snored on his back, like most snorers, some of whom Peter had been at boarding school or college with, where the antidote he’d learned early on, sharing with his brother, had come in handy.

Davy had lived in a dormitory, as an apprentice jockey to a racing stable, Peter recalled, and had experienced shared sleeping quarters as an actor. Maybe he was only pretending to believe Peter when he claimed the pole was for opening the top window? Or he’d always been asleep when he’d given rise to its use. Peter cocked his head to listen. Yes, back to the sigh, the lengthy precursor to the snuffles. Peace for an hour or two. Not that Peter minded; he fell asleep easily, syncing his breathing to his companion’s.

“Rain,” he muttered, hearing the fat splashes. “Rainy season.” Like the tropics, if theirs was mid-October to end of April, with the heaviest rainfall in early February, like here. He tried to discern if the rain was any harder or heavier or faster than it had been when he’d gone to bed, but couldn’t. The low thud and grumble clued him in as to what had woken him. _Thunder._ A roll, going by its pitch and length.

He’d told his brothers that thunder was God bowling, and the noise did sound like a heavy ball thumping as it dropped, then rumbling as it rolled. Which of them was it had gotten the name of the rumble noise wrong, called it brontosaurus instead of brontide? He held in his burst of laughter, but it still shook his bed.

The next thunder noise was a clap, a sharp and higher-pitched crack. It must be near, maybe overhead. A different sort of sound made Peter still, straining to listen. A bump? Little shuffles? A…whimper? Whatever it was, it was coming from inside the pad, more precisely the den, not far from where Peter lay. He shrugged, unalarmed. The house held two other people, either of whom could be— Shrieking in fright! The screech was muffled, as if by a hand over the mouth, but Peter had caught it and, going by the crazy stuff that had happened in the pad and out of it so far, guessed he’d better climb into shorts and a tee and go investigate. Go help and hopefully not hinder. Go—

Have Micky back into him in the dark just outside his room. The collision was hard, too, and involved the whole length of Micky’s body, from his feet on Peter’s toes to what would have been the back of his head smacking into the bridge of Peter’s nose if he hadn’t jerked his head back. Micky froze. Then, his hands, which seemed to have been covering his face, rose in what Peter still thought of as _Hände hoch_, a legacy of his Berlin _Kindheit_.

“Micky, it’s me, Peter,” he whispered.

Micky pushed back against him, as if testing. Pushed and rubbed, just a little. Hmm… “_Peter?_” He lowered his hands and leaned his head back, before turning it slowly, dragging his cheek against Peter’s and stroking his nose along Peter’s ear, his hair tickling as he whispered, “There’s someone in the pad. Over there!”

He reversed the rubbing and stroking as he faced forward again, and Peter, not knowing exactly why, grabbed for him. He wrapped one arm around Micky’s small waist above his pj pants and held the other vertically down the middle of Micky’s bare chest, moving his hand over Micky’s heart to assess its rate and Mick’s fear level.

“Sorry,” Peter murmured when his elbow pressed into Micky’s groin.

The whimper Micky gave wasn’t from that, but from the way a small bolt of lightning lit up a section of the pad, the part holding their meeting table. Micky’s hands crept up, to cover his mouth and eyes. Peter gave Mick a squeeze then dropped his hands from him and took a step forward, to stand beside him and peer over in the darkness.

“At the table. Wearing a suit and tie,” Micky whispered, loosening his hand over his mouth a little. “I think it must a guard from the _Archivum Secretum Vaticanum_.”

It took Peter a second to catch that. Micky’s accent was— “The Secret Vatican Archives?” He gaped at Micky. “Why would you say _that_?”

“Oh, I, well… Heh…”

The little Peter could see of Mick’s face looked shifty. “Look, I don’t know what you’ve had going on…” Micky didn’t take his cue. Huh. “But I doubt it,” he said. “The Swiss Guards, the bodyguards to the Pope, is that what you mean?” And wow, he’d never thought he’d utter a sentence like that one. “They wear striped Renaissance uniforms with puffy breeches and tunics with puffy sleeves. And huge floppy black berets like pancakes.” Or that one.

A minor, last-gasp roll of thunder crashed and another and tiny last flicker of lightning stuck…to reveal a figure sitting at the meeting table. Micky emitted a squeak-yelp noise, halfway between a rusty hinge and a dog whose paw was trodden on.

“That?” Peter asked, leaving Micky to go switch on the lamp. “That’s… Mick, come see!” He had to round him up and push him over to the table, then pull his hand from his eyes.

“A _dummy_? Pete, it’s not a _ventriloquist’s_ _dummy_, is it?” Micky sounded more scared than before now.

“Micky…” The layers to this guy’s life amazed Peter. “No. It’s a display model. Look.” He showed off the besuited figure, running his finger over the eyeglasses it was sporting. “He got made redundant. Surplus to requirements now it’s a la mode to have pretty chicks in miniskirts modelling everything. Even at—”

“The Akron!” Micky nodded in comprehension, his fear more or less gone. “So you took him.”

“Found him in the daily cast-out pallet beside the dumpster when I was outside on break. Like the chimp.” Peter stroked him too, so he wouldn’t feel superseded. He’d rescued that last September during his couple weeks’ modelling the winter collection, and earlier today had thought the forlorn male ex-showroom display dummy would be a fitting quasi-human companion to the simian. And be a good souvenir of his current stint demonstrating the spring merchandise.

“You didn’t get anything from when you were showing the fall collection last summer?” Micky questioned, catching his thought. That had been B.B, Before Beechwood, so Peter was a little surprised Micky remembered. “So you should take two souvenirs in April when you’re modelling the summer stuff!”

“You…have the _couture_ season calendar memorized?” Peter was surprised by that but not by Micky’s enthusiasm for the odds and ends Peter collected—Micky did the same. He wasn’t likely to scoff at Peter for not asking for free clothes, say, as a thank-you present, from the old family friend from back home who now ran the clothing department at the store and employed Peter for two weeks at a time, from time to time.

No, Micky was hardly the spokesman for conventional living, not when he’d merrily accepted four experimental-design unicycles as part of _his_ wages for his short stint as salesman at the eclectic, or ‘serendipity’ department store on Sunset. Peter’s Connecticut connection had put in a word to get Micky in on the home furnishings floor, from where Mick had taken home a sculpted giraffe from Kenya _and_ a carved Red Indian statue.

It, and everything, including the old props and costumes that were part and parcel of Micky, fitted with the rest of their décor, adding to the palimpsest that was their pad. _Their lives._ The dummy would too, once he had a name. “So, okay now?” Peter inquired of Micky where he was warily examining the besuited figure.

“I—” Micky broke off as a whoosh of wind whistled around the roof, throwing a fat spatter-patter of rain in its wake. “Don’t do well in storms,” he finished in a shamed mutter.

Peter frowned, seeing an image of kid Micky teetering on a roof clutching a homemade kite while heavy thunder boomed above him, white lightning flashed around him and unforgiving rain drenched him through. He jumped when the lightning in the vision zizzed and crackled all around Micky, bathing him in a weird blue-white glow and briefly illuminating his…_skeleton, _like an X-ray? Peter shook his head to clear it. Micky shivered, so Peter looked around and spied a thin sweater lying over the back of a chair. Where Michael would have gone over, taken it up and probably pulled it over Mick’s head for him, Peter merely jerked his chin at it.

“Mike?” he asked, following his train of thought.

Micky emerged from the oatmeal-colored tunnel of the sweater. “Think he’s got ear plugs in, or he’s dog-tired. I stood by his bed for a bit, seeing if…he was okay,” he finished.

Peter hid a smile, wondering if Micky’d planned to hover next to Peter’s bed and ‘see if he was okay’ next, presumably whimpering and shivering a little as he did so. He debated whether to make tea. Mike would have already had the milk—if there was any; water if there wasn’t—boiling for hot chocolate for Micky, Peter betted.

Whereas he’d been reading up on the different properties of different leaves and plants and had started buying the leaves, buds and roots from the organic growers at the farmers’ market. A lavender and magnolia brew would calm Micky down and make him sleepy. But that would be just dealing with this occasion. “_Teach_ a man to fish…” he muttered, turning to look out of the big windows.

“Huh?” Micky pulled a mild version of the _Peter?!_ eyeroll-and-thin-lipped expression he was developing.

“C’m over here.” Peter indicated Micky should go with him over to the podium windows. “So, the Vatican?” he murmured, curious about Micky’s side adventures. Micky went in for the selective deafness he indulged in when it suited him. “Ventriloquism?” Peter prompted, and Micky’s deafness increased. “Is it things with a V day?” Peter finished, giving up.

“Why here?” Micky asked, standing a little farther back from the glass windows than Peter did.

“Look.” Peter took in the vista before them, the night made thicker and the sea made into quicksilver by the rain.

“The moon looks different,” Micky agreed. “I mean, it’s full, but—” He flinched and almost ducked as a fountain of rain blew toward their faces and silvered the glass in front of them for a few gray-white seconds.

“You know the best way to get over a fear?” Peter asked.

“Smoke a bowl?”

“When did you start hanging out with Steve?” Peter was only half-joking. _Roll a joint, man_ was Peter’s friend’s answer to most questions and situations, with _pack a pipe_ the solution to several more. “No, it’s to face it. As in, let’s go swimming.” He pointed at the dark expanse of ocean.

“I’m not scared of the _water_, Peter. I… Oh.” Micky swung from his still not that enthusiastic contemplation of the broken-sky night to Peter, the idea kindling within, as Peter had intended.

“I’ve surfed in storms,” Peter confessed. “My rationale is that you don’t see masses of dead fish, struck by lightning, right, so I’ll probably be okay. And, man, the high winds are exhilarating. But this storm’s passed now…”

“And swimming at night in open water is boss.” _Now_ Micky was picking up his cues.

“And I was planning to go out, to observe Imbolc,” Peter improvised. His turn for elective deafness, ignoring Mick’s, “She that strawberry-blonde with the _legs_, down the block? _Thought_ she looked Swedish! You want the binoculars? And the stepladder?”

“_Imbolc_, Micky. You know, the traditional Celtic festival of the start of spring? It should be celebrated about halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.” He doubted Mick was as aware of those dates as he was of the fashion seasons, so wouldn’t know how off Peter was.

“How?”

Peter vaguely recalled something about sacrificing lambs, but kept that to himself. “Oh, going out into nature and making noise, like, chanting and shouting, to tell the last of the winter to go away and let the spring start.”

“Huh.” Micky looked interested. “Like take back the night.”

“Yeah, being louder than any old last gurgle of thunder or spark of lightning left,” Peter added.

“Take back the season!”

And reclaim the fear, Peter thought, pleased at his idea and Micky being into it.

“So you were gonna—”

“Well, I would’ve asked you, obviously.” Micky hated being left out. “But I figured it might be too cold for you, a California kid. It’s below seventy.” _Much below, being less than sixty._ Impugned, Micky lunged for him and they play-fought.

“Well, I’d go, Peter, I really would, but I was always told to check with an adult before doing something crazy like maybe drowning at sea in a rainstorm celebrating a non-Christian religious festival.” Micky surveyed the empty den and looked at Peter. “If only there was one about to ask!” He ducked his return mock-punch from technically-an-adult Peter with ease.

“Ha, joke’s on you, because you know what? There _is_ a responsible adult in the room!” Peter ran back to the table and their new resident, inside whose shirt he fished, freeing the cord connected to the middle of the dummy’s chest. “You didn’t see this?” He slotted a finger through the ring at the end. “He dispenses advice!”

“Wow. That’s so trippy!” Micky curled a slim finger over Peter’s and pulled.

“One man’s rain is another man’s liquid LSD,” intoned the mannequin.

Peter and Micky stared at each other. “Shouldn’t that phrase be ‘liquid sunshine’?’ Micky whispered.

“It’s advice from a grown-up, _hombre_!” Peter reasoned. “What more do you need? Come on, Imbolc waits for no man!”

“Not even Imbolc-ciles!” shouted Micky, shushing himself at once and shooting an agonized glance up the helical stairs at the top bedroom. But the door remained closed and no irascible tall, slim, wool-hat-wearing Texan appeared. Which was…kind of a pity. _Oh._ Peter blinked in surprise. _Huh. Really? Well, well._

* * *

Down on the pockmarked sand below the sundeck, sniffing the thicker than usual ozone, Peter shivered against the chill and the prickles of rain on his skin that stung like needles. The cold dissipated a little with them doing calisthenics to stretch, exercises that quickly became a two-person Monkee walk and two-player leap Monkee. _And the rain won’t be able to zing us in the water,_ Peter reasoned.

“I’m dodging the raindrops!” Micky cried. “Least, I’m not feeling ’em anymore!”

“Maybe Imbolc’s made you waterproof!” Peter called, happy Micky wasn’t cowed by the elements any longer.

“I guess we’ll soon see.” Micky’s hands hesitated at his waistband.

Oh yeah. Not only had they neglected to change into their wetsuits, which would have warded them against the cold and the slap of the rain, they…hadn’t even brought swimsuits with them. “Uh-huh,” Peter agreed, stripping off his tee and sliding his boxers down. “Yes, pagan rituals call for being sky-clad.” For all he knew.

“Before I follow suit—”

“Into your birthday suit.”

“He’s here all week, folks. Try the chicken and please tip your server. And not over a cliff. Even if she did leave a hair in your gravy. Before I get nekkid, please remember it’s cold and think kindly of me.”

“Micky—” He couldn’t work out if it was some routine or the guy had a hang-up. “I’ve seen you getting into the shower,” he reminded Micky. “And in the shower. And getting out of the shower. And I’d say you had nothing to worry about.”

With a, “But that was warm water!” a now-naked Micky dived into the shallows and squealed at the cold. Peter supressed his instinctive cry when he followed and instead yelled, “Imbolc!”

“Down with winter solstice!” Micky shouted, shaking his hair back from his eyes and spraying Peter with the arc of water he loosed.

“Equal rights for Spring equinox! Rites too!” Peter shouted in reply, smacking the surface of the water with a hand, to splash Micky back.

Micky, divining his intent, threw himself out of range, via a backflip, submerging and resurfacing, teeth chattering. “That the best you can do?” came his version of a subtle invitation, and it soon became if not warm, then less freezing, and a lot of fun, with them launching into an impromptu race that didn’t take them too far out to sea, but parallel to the shore.

“I should swim more at night. You do, right?” Micky called across, their initial burst of competitive speed abating.

“Yeah. It clears my head more.”

“Hey, you should ration yourself there, _amigo_!”

The yelp Micky gave after that zinger was in response to Peter diving for his legs in retaliation. Peter clasped his feet, but Micky slipped free and away. Faster and stronger, Peter was soon on him, leaping onto his back to duck him. But Micky was wrigglier, and loose within a minute, heading for the rocks a little way out in the water, the in-the-ocean counterpoint to the make-out rocks on the sand.

“I get it,” he panted, hauling himself up to sprawl—carefully, and shiver a little. “Swimming when the water’s quieter. Davy goes out at twilight, too. And not just to mop up the stragglers, the leftover chicks.” True—Davy was athletic. “Hey, if you didn’t surf at sun-up, would you go swim then?”

“Probably not!” Peter admitted, his teeth chattering and amazed the rain felt wetter and colder than the ocean did. “Surfing’s…different. Worth getting up for, you dig? And I’d probably stay in bed…if I had a reason to.” It’d been a while— He thought back to when he’d last been in a relationship, something involving more than casual—

“_Shark!_” Micky clutched at Peter along with emitting that strangled yelp. “Look!”

Peter tried to, where Mick’s wavering finger was pointing, and the patch of ocean there did look darker. More choppy? And it moved. Peter swallowed. There _were_ tiger sharks along the coast here, but—

“It can’t be, right? In the paper, it said most attacks happen between eight in the morning and six in the evening, remember? And mostly on weekends. And during the warmer seasons of the year!” Micky’s hand gesture was probably supposed to indicate the dark of the night and the cold of the winter season.

“Yes…” Peter didn’t want to lie, even though the water was churning. “But that’s more to do with human habits than shark. Just think when more people are in the water, to get attacked?”

“Now you start with the logic?” Micky stood, his bare feet shaping themselves over the rock’s ridges and his toes gripping a jutting ledge. Did he think he could peer farther into the depths from a greater height? “And that’s like one of those trilogism things. You know, all cats are animals and all animals have four legs so therefore all cats have four legs. So, all shark attacks are—”

“Oh, a syllogism.” Peter tried not to think that the ripples made by something…big under the water were getting closer and veering toward them. He tugged Micky down onto their small island. “But, you know there’s also a sillygism?”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. So, more people drown in summer and more ice cream is sold in summer, so if you don’t eat ice cream, you have less chance of drowning?” Micky laughed, so Peter continued. “So, if sharks—”

“Are headed right for us!” Micky pointed, although there was no need, not when the heaving, moving patch was almost on them. “And they’re—”

“_Dolphins!_”

The mass broke into several long black, torpedo-shaped and rubbery-looking creatures, some of which swam clockwise around the rock platform Peter and Micky once more stood upon, and some anti-clockwise, diving in and out of the water, flipping their flippers and tipping their tails.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Peter added. It would have been a stupid way to go.

“Is this an Imbolc thing?” Micky whispered, spinning to follow the pod’s progress.

“Must be.” Peter nodded, tracking the acrobatic manoevers of the group who met on the far side of the rocks, reared up and played around in a sort of water ballet, then did another circuit. “And if not…this must be.”

Just as he nudged Micky to indicate what he meant, it stopped raining and the clear, sharp moonlight allowed them both a perfect view of the large, low creature heaving itself up onto the rocks on its belly and lumbering toward them on short flipper-feet. Not that they could have missed it anyway: it must have been seven feet long and was fairly broad.

“Sea lion.” Micky spoke with the confidence of one who’d spent a lot of time over the years at the Pacific Ocean Park on Ocean Park Pier.

“Who looks pissed,” Peter added.

“I’m guessing this is his spot?”

It was an easy assumption for Micky to make, the way the brown marine mammal advanced on them and nudged its whiskery face into them. It didn’t let up until it had them backed to the end of the rock, right to the edge, like making them walk the plank. Once it had them where it wanted them, it pushed a little extra, barking at them too, until they toppled backward into the ocean once more. Then it sighed in satisfaction and flopped flat.

“You okay?” Peter demanded as they surfaced. He felt a little weak himself, and Micky looked also translucent, in the moonlight. He must be tiring. “Let’s get to shore, huh?” He hoped…Micky could make it.

Micky nodded. “Forget what I said about coming swimming at night. Still, at least nothing else can happ…en…” His trailing off was accompanied by his pointing, and the continued pointing that he trod water and span in a circle to do. A circle like the one forming around them, made up of thicker, squatter bodies than the dolphins.

“Seals,” Peter whispered.

The ring moved, and they had no choice but to move with it, contained within it. “Like cops!” Peter exclaimed.

“Or security guards. They’re bouncing us out of the _ocean_, man!”

They couldn’t not laugh, even though it tired them more, at being bums-rushed by— “A harem!”

“What?” Micky, more dog-paddling than swimming asked him.

“We’ve got a harem! A group of seals is a—”

“Pod.” Micky’s correction came firm above the splashing and lapping of the dark waves.

“And a herd.”

“And a wall. Of bouncers.”

Peter concentrated on moving in the water, not jamming on that. Neither his nor Micky’s performance would have won points for style although Peter felt he was drawing on the animals’ energy, drawing a little strength from it, maybe, and wondered if Micky felt the same. Whatever, Peter was so glad to see the lights of buildings along the beach road looming and gleaming brighter and clearer with each stroke.

With no warning, the loop of seals opened in front of them, leaving a gap. The circle closed in on them, as if squeezing them out in a parody of birth, and Peter and Micky stumbled into the shallows then collapsed facedown onto the wet sand.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod!” Micky breathed.

Still panting, Peter flipped onto his back and raised his head, to see…nothing. No dark fusiform shapes, no rippling waters, no eddying waves. He turned to Micky for corroboration, and Micky, also sitting, reached to grab him in a long, hard hug. It was awkward and uncomfortable and unplanned, with their faces mashed together, and Peter squirmed for an inch of space. Micky chased him, mainly his face, planting his lips on Peter’s in a long smacking kiss, still clasping him tight.

The holding became a pressing, then a rubbing, and if it had been a shot from a silent movie or a picture in a flicker book or a panel in a comic magazine, the caption would have read the same: _desperation_. Or maybe _relief_, a by-product of the adrenaline rush now ebbing from Micky.

“Hey, ease up there,” Peter murmured, separating his lower half from Micky’s, but holding on to him and letting him cling until his breathing levelled out and his heart stopped banging. Pressed into him like that, Peter actually felt it slow and calm against his chest.

“Sorry,” Micky muttered.

“No need. No judgment.” Peter was firm on that, hating the sheepish mumble to Mick’s voice.

“But those were…_animals_, right?” Micky whispered. “Not like merpeople or nothing?”

Peter understood the question. His mind had been running along selkie, or seal folk, lines. “Could be a thing of this festival,” he replied. “I think it’s associated with water.” Sacred wells, perhaps, he thought he recalled. “So we should make totems. Just in case.”

“Poles? That’s Native American, man! And it’ll take forever!” Micky groaned, his question of a second or two ago forgotten.

“No, a totem’s an object or symbol that represents a group. Their spirits. In this case, those animals. Here, I’ll do it.”

Wet and shivering, a little higher up, on slightly drier sand, and under Micky’s critical eye, he sculpted sand into—

“Selphins? Some sorta seal-dolphin hybrids?” Head tilted, Micky narrowed his eyes at Peter’s efforts.

Peter threw down the handful of wet sand he was clutching. About to ask Micky if he could do any better, in these conditions, he took in the stronger, thicker oxygen and chlorine smell of ozone. He knew what it meant and sure enough, within seconds, the rain pelted down again. “We need shelter,” he called, over the _plat-patter_, scanning the sands. “Like… What’s that?” He knew what it was, a white beach tent. He just didn’t know why there’d be one, here and now.

“It’s an Imbolc miracle, baby!” Micky was already darting to it. He stopped at its flap of a door and Peter ran into him, like earlier. It made him expel a breath of laughter into the back of Micky’s neck. and Micky shivered. “These clothes…” Micky snatched up the drawstring shorts and cabin-boy pants, the long-sleeved tee and sweatshirt. “They could be ours.”

“We have towels like this too.” Peter got to it first. He didn’t think it strange: the items were commonplace; the small store near the pier sold these towels.

“Maybe the merpeople left them for us!”

“Or Michael dashed up and laid them out for us,” Peter retaliated, making them both snort and gurgle with laughter. He let Micky take the other end of the towel to swipe at himself at the same time and they ended up patting at each other. It was intimate inside the tent, safe, dry and even a little warm while the rain pittered outside. Peter hooked the flap back to see out. The moonlight looked interesting on the water and the stars twinkled.

The dusky pearl light inside the tent showed Micky’s lips looking puffy. No doubt a reaction to the salt water or where he’d been biting them out of nerves, but they looked kiss-swollen and, with his touseled hair and heavy-lidded eyes, erotic. What brain chemicals or hormones had been released by the perceived danger and tension, and the physical exertion? Peter didn’t know but supposed they were now flooding their systems, along with the hormone released by physical closeness and social bonding. Peter…encouraged the latter, among the four of them. It made communal living easier. Oh, and Jesus, what a time to get a woodie.

“Hey, show me a move, Big Pete.”

“Huh?” He’d hoped Micky wouldn’t catch on, but the shorts were fairly unforgiving.

“A _move_,” Micky repeated. “I bet you got some slick ones. I can tell.”

Fighting a smile, Peter took the towel and rubbed at Micky’s hair for him. He flicked the towel into a roll, hooked it around the back of Mick’s neck and pulled him in with it until they were toe-to-toe, forehead-to-forehead, which was when he let his smile free. Not his usual dimpled beam but the knowing-eyed, curled-lipped one.

“Oh.” Micky swallowed. “And here we are without anything to smoke.”

They’d smoked up a few times since that first night, in public settings or with others.

“Meaning no kissing since that first time,” Micky continued.

Peter was surprised Micky remembered, not so surprised Micky cottoned on to his thoughts. “Sometimes I regret turning you on,” he said.

“What? It’s not you—it’s those tight shorts. They’d do it for anyone!” Micky quipped, pointing at Peter’s thighs and crotch.

“Let’s just wait out the storm.” Peter sat, then lay down, the towel a makeshift pillow, Micky copying him.

“Show _you_ a move?” was all the warning Peter had before Micky pounced, stretching out on top of him and, pinning him down, shoved his face into Peter’s. It was clumsy and crude, but Peter was horny and didn’t see any reason to resist.

“Call that a move?” He twisted, reversing them so he was on top. He pressed his lips lightly against Micky’s, ignoring the eager way they parted for him. He had to pull away when Micky shoved his tongue into Peter’s mouth. “Start gently!” he said, showing Micky what he meant, caressing and stroking with his tongue, especially the roof of Micky’s mouth. He enjoyed the dazed look on Micky’s face when he paused, shifting to make room for Micky’s erection. “You…” _Horny, got nothing or no one better to do, feel some primordial, atavistic need to celebrate being alive, want to bond, all of the above…_ “Okay with this?”

“With what?” Micky’s attempt at control, levity, whatever it was, vanished when his eyes and mouth shot open: Peter ground his hips into Micky’s, making their erect cocks slide together.

“Something new.” Because he doubted Micky had ever done this—with a guy…

“I know…what dry…humping is, Pete—oh!”

His new name was Micky’s reaction to Peter rubbing, gently, slowly, purposefully against him. Micky panted like a dog when Peter changed to a thrusting as insistent and rhythmic as anything Micky coaxed from his drums. His hands flailed, first beating on the sand then grabbing Peter’s butt.

“Not dry humping. Outercourse.”

“Outer—oh!”

He liked hearing Micky make that sound. _Making_ Micky make that sound.

“Like innercourse.”

“_Inter_course,” Peter corrected, stretching one of Micky’s arms out to pin it at the wrist, leaving him the other free to burrow under Peter’s borrowed sweatshirt and scrabble at the skin of his back. Peter kept the movements of his hips slow and controlled, increasing the friction and stimulation, and heated up the caresses of his tongue, now practically fighting for space with Micky’s in Micky’s mouth.

His hand cradling Micky’s jaw and face, and the other clamping his wrist must be hard and hurting a little, he thought. He paused, just a second, to check the whimpers and gasps coming from Micky weren’t borne of physical pain. No, not by the way Micky thrust against him.

“Pete—_Jesus_…coming!” Micky yelled in his ear a minute later, wrenching his mouth free as his body arched.

_So that’s what he looks like when he climaxes._ Peter couldn’t spend long in contemplation, not with Micky’s frantic writhing dragging his own orgasm from him. His body stiffened and he came, his face buried in the crook of Micky’s neck, taking care not to fasten his teeth to the warm flesh there, enjoying how Micky’s chorus of moans and cries prolonged matters.

He pulled Micky on top of him again as they came down, thinking Micky needed the contact. And Peter wasn’t averse to it. But _yeuch_, the cooling sticky cum inside his shorts—he hadn’t thought this through. Regardless, he looped his hands around Micky, his hands on his small ass, until Micky slid off to lie flat, still looking at Peter.

“So.” Peter stretched to place a final kiss on Micky’s reddened lips. “Another dip in the water, freshen up?” He defended himself against the attempted punch this elicited. “A bob!” he suddenly said. “Another collective noun for seals is a bob. And…”

“What.” Micky eyed him where he lay laughing.

“I always wanted to go somewhere like Scotland and see dotterels. They’re this mountain crag-dwelling sea bird.”

“Because…”

“The collective noun for them is a trip! Isn’t that wild! Imagine, you could point and say, ‘What a trip!’”

“And if they looked angry, you could say, ‘What a bummed trip!’ Pete?” Micky propped his head on his hand. “Whatever you got planned for Easter, can I like, reserve a place now?”

The rain stopped and they waded, clothed, into the ocean to clean up and played a Monkee version of flag tag that involved trying to snatch the towel and flick the other with it, all the way home, where Micky screeched anew at the display dummy in the den, having forgotten about him. He split for his room, galloping up the stairs like his ass was on fire, and Peter pulled the mannequin’s string.

“Love is friendship set to music,” the still-nameless dummy intoned, its huge blue eyes earnest. Peter, bent almost double laughing in delight, couldn’t help but agree.


	3. Summer, 1965 part one

Peter glanced at Micky out of the corner of his eye. He didn’t have a watch to time it with but thought he had the sequence down. _Countdown to another grouse in five, four, three, two—_

“One thing I’ve always had is a car!”

Peter rolled his shoulders under the weight of his rucksack and pulled on his wide-eyed simpleton face. “Oh? Why didn’t we drive then, instead of hitching?”

“No, I don’t got a car _now_, man!”

“Right.” Peter wiped his forearm across his forehead, blotting up sweat. Northern Cali wasn’t supposed to be as hot as Southern, but it was far from cool and certainly not weather for trekking miles along dusty roads, carrying heavy packs. “No, I didn’t think you had, not after trading it in, in exchange for that Pontiac you were working on at JJ’s garage—”

“Peter—”

“Yep, traded in, along with Davy’s car.”

“Pete—”

“And mine—”

“Pe—”

“Without us knowing.”

“P—”

“Oh, _and_ Mike’s.” Yeah, he went there.

“You know why I had to do it!”

“Because you’d customized the Pontiac, meaning no one else would want it, and you didn’t have enough cash to buy it.”

They’d both stopped now, in the irrigated desert valley heat.

“Peter, I’m really, really, really sorry.” Micky looked about to cry. Again.

“Hey.” Peter took a drink from his canteen and handed it over. He felt fine now his irritation with the heat and dust was out of his system. And while being mean to someone sucked, being mean to Micky sucked double. “Look, I’m fine with the agreement we came to over it.”

He hated dishwashing at the best of times, so four months of Mick doing that chore for him suited him. His clunker hadn’t been worth much more. He calculated: Micky had started at the beginning of this month, so Peter wouldn’t be touching a sponge or detergent until the end of September. Which would mark his one-year anniversary of moving into the pad. “Huh. Nice celebration,” he muttered.

“Thanks, Petey. And the others?” Micky asked, shading his eyes against the overhead sun.

“I can’t speak as to what you have going with Davy…” Davy was close-mouthed. Reason Peter liked confiding in him. “But whatever you arranged with Michael, I’d add to it more closing the door when you use the bathroom? Oh, and less Micky Specials when you make sandwiches. For at least a few more months.”

Handing Peter back his water bottle, Micky looked even more dejected.

“Hey, I’m not saying I didn’t appreciate the ham, mustard, and Oreos on white. Or the French fries and maple syrup filling in the sandwich you made using two slices of pepperoni pizza as bread.”

“And the Cheez Whizz and Apple O’s on a roll?”

“No. I didn’t like that at all. Maybe it was the sliced pickles you added to mine.” Peter had to grin. Gloom sat oddly on Micky’s coiled-spring energy, banking it down. “But I’ll say it again, you did a fantastic job on the GTO. Great colors. Credit where credit’s due. I know Michael thinks so too.”

“Yeah?” Micky’s entire face turned up in a grin. “Yeah, I got this understanding of machines. A sort of feeling going with them, you know?”

“Umm.” Peter slung the canteen’s strap back across himself. “You certainly knew what was wrong with that Oldsmobile that picked us up. You said the horizontal shock absorber in the rear suspension was loose and about to go—and then it did.”

“Peter, I’m really sorry about that too.”

“About us being ejected from the car for giving out negative vibes?” He didn’t add the _and being bad witches_ part. That accusation, by the chick in the passenger seat, had just been _silly_.

“Oh, man.” Micky turned and shuffled a few paces to collapse in a heap under a tree. Peter followed, and Micky peered up at him. “Man, Peter, I’m…Jonah. That was my whale.”

“Second, if we’re counting. Remember the Plymouth— No wait, I don’t think the story goes like that.”

But Micky wasn’t in any mood to listen. “I bet if I wasn’t with you, you’d have hitched all the way from the Santa Monica Freeway out here in one ride, with the number of people coming here.”

Peter didn’t really think _that_ many people would be attending the first edition of the Dena Valley Folk Festival. New things like this took a while to bed in, even a folk jamboree set up this year as a West Coast rival to the more famous East Coast celebration. “I’m not angry,” he answered Micky’s continued self-recriminations. “If anything, I’m irritated Michael wouldn’t countenance us having the Pontiac for the weekend.”

“The—”

“Monkeemobile. Sorry. I like the name,” he assured Micky, but the way Mike had vetoed them driving to Northern California in the still-new vehicle still rankled. “But look, we’re in town now.”

“Really?” LA born and bred Micky frowned at the peaceful street and its few buildings. Peter would have expected more people out and about, even though it was hot. Maybe even the locals were out in the valley, participating at the festival in some way?

“Yeah. The stores are yonder—you can tell by how the sidewalk’s more worn down over there,” Peter added, pre-empting any question. “And when we get there, I’ll—”

“Show me a move?” Micky often demanded this of Peter, usually when he was bored. Peter had decided Micky was a human repository of tones, actions, and even gestures, stuff he had to observe to mimic and store up to use when necessary. Peter nodded and the prospect of seeing and learning something new put energy into Micky, and he pulled himself upright.

“Milligan’s,” Micky read on the store a little bigger than the rest that they reached within a minute or two of walking the quiet street. “Same as the town. Maybe the settler?”

“The colonizer. That’s hardly a Native American name,” Peter corrected. Whatever, it was a local groceries and provisions store, and they were going in. “Ready?” Peter finger-combed his bangs and undid another button on his shirt, turning up the _blond winsomeness_ dial and intensifying his _in need of your help_ vibes as he ducked under the old-fashioned bell.

“Is that how you get rides?” Micky breathed, drinking in Peter’s every movement.

“How I got this one,” Peter murmured a half-hour later at the location, as they stepped out of the store owner’s daughter’s truck. They helped her unload the donated supplies she’d _said_ she’d been going to take out later anyway, still pleasantly replete from the coffee and homemade cookies she’d _sworn_ she’d been about to have when they walked in. Peter tucked away the extra ones she’d urged on him. They’d probably come in handy later.

“Neat.” Micky crammed his last cookie in his mouth and looked around the place. “Do you know all these people?”

Peter ignored that. He knew several of the groups and soloists booked to play over the course of this three-day weekend, of course, including the group he did session work for and that he was here to play with. Luckily they were on today, Saturday, and not yesterday—the time it’d taken him and Micky to get here, with all their…adventures, he’d have missed the gig. And many acts he didn’t know personally, he knew _of_.

The spot struck Peter as more of a campsite than a performance venue, although he could see a stage and sound equipment farther up, on slightly higher ground, and the place would look different, once the concert began, of course. He nudged Micky to head on over to the lines of tents and vans, shaking his head when Micky asked if they shouldn’t be looking for a spot to pitch their tent. Not yet. He wanted to find the group. Their vehicle should be easy enough to spot.

“Oh, man, look at all those Volkswagen Kombis!” Micky’s voice held the envy of someone who wanted a VW van of his own. “If I had one, I’d customize it and—” He shut up, his recent actions hitting him.

“Peter, hi!” Nina jumped down from what Peter thought of as a bus and hugged him. “Carrie, look, finally!”

“We thought you’d be here yesterday,” Carrie said, standing back from hugging him in turn. Nina’s sister, they looked a little alike, maybe. They had several mannerisms and expressions in common.

“We’ve been hitching since yesterday. Long story.” Peter shook hands with Bill, Carrie’s husband, and clapped him on the back.

“Is it Micky or Mike?” Nina asked, hugging Micky anyway. “I get mixed up.”

“Me too,” Micky replied, accepting the hug with enthusiasm and looking at Carrie for a second one.

“Micky,” Peter informed them, understanding the Monkees, as a group, hadn’t hung a whole lot with the Four Winds. Well, why would they? “Mike and Davy were busy.” He side-hugged Drake, the fourth member of the folk group, and wondered what the other two would have made of the festival, Mike especially.

“You hitchhiked? Why not come with us?” Drake asked, slapping the side of the van.

“Micky…wanted the full folk festival experience.” Peter managed to swerve not that far from the truth, especially with Micky making hurried but very beseeching puppy-dog eyes at him. Fine, Peter wouldn’t reveal that Micky had wanted to put to the test if what happened to guys hitchhiking—at least, according to the ‘readers’ letters’ in the magazines he read—happened to him. His fervent belief that either a bus containing a girls’ gymnastics team _or_ a pick-up driven by a farmer’s horny daughter _and_ her sluttiest friends would stop for them had led to their night spent in hiding. And damn, they’d forgotten to call home, as they’d been made to promise. Oh well. Too bad.

“Yeah, you know, to really folk out,” Micky claimed. He examined the VW. “You’re sleeping in here? I thought the performers would be in a hotel or inn. Like, in one of the resort cities?” He pointed, indicating the upper valley and its rich-people’s playgrounds, yonder. “Well, not Peter, obviously, but—”

“Hardly, when we’re getting scale!” Nina scoffed. “Oh, no, don’t get me wrong. We’re happy to. We’re in favor of getting back to grass roots with this small and non-commercial festival. Every music event is getting so big nowadays.”

“Even the Newport,” Carrie said. “And we deserve our own West Coast edition, right? We wanna make it happen.”

They were genuine, Peter knew. Not bread-heads, dragging themselves to wherever record producers or record company executives might discover them. Or else he wouldn’t have gotten along with them. He liked their folk-pop sound, the close harmony of the sisters’ voices, arranged by Bill. “No, leave it, Micky,” he ordered, seizing Micky where he was enthusing about the vehicle’s rear boxer engine and trying to open up the access panel. “No time. Come on. Catch you in a few, guys.”

Gleaning more and more insight into what Michael went through, Peter managed to drag Micky away before he got his hands on any moving Volkswagen parts—the group would need the bus to get back to LA, and Peter thought he and Micky would probably go with them, Micky’s “Dear Readers” hopes now dashed once and for all. Peter hoped. They walked to the end of a row of tents and cast their gear down.

“Yeah, I like this idea.” Micky, his grasp loosening on the tent pole Peter was trying to work into place, squinted around, his hair in his eyes. “A performers’ festival, right? All this nature and outdoors and stuff as well. Feels…peaceful. Yeah. The air’s quiet.”

It wasn’t a half-hour later when they were still struggling with the heavy canvas and carping at each other. Peter half-wished Mike was there. At least if he was, Davy too, with Mike chivvying them all, they’d be holding the four tent poles up properly…well, after mock-jousting with them or playing pretend high-wire walkers with them or re-designing the tent into a tepee because it looked more natural. Oh wait, that was Micky. “You—”

“Er, hi?”

Peter jumped at the voice and Micky dropped whatever he was supposed to be holding in favor of sidling up to the chicks in matching tees, who wore badges on strings around their necks.

“We’re volunteers?” said the other girl.

“Oh, thank God,” Micky sighed. “We’re having such trouble. We’re real stuck. If you could—”

They…weren’t that kind of volunteer. In fact, they were _organizing_ the volunteers…

“And I don’t think they know what _volunteers_ means,” Micky hissed, tent attempts abandoned and forced behind a long trestle table bearing potatoes and vegetables that needed peeling or scraping or carving or something. “And I have to help with the sound system and lighting later?”

“You wanted the full folk feel,” Peter pointed out. “Folk as in people. Joining together. It’s why the entrance fee was so low.”

“Well, _I_ feel low!” Micky declared.

“Think yourself lucky. Yesterday I dug latrines,” the guy next to them told them with a shudder. He gripped his potato peeler tightly, perhaps in case anyone tried to take it away, leaving him wide open for a different chore. “This is a step up.”

“And when your work-time’s up, you can go for leisure-time,” a girl called across the table.

“Or practice, in my case,” Peter informed Micky, jerking his chin at the roped-off space to their right.

“Rigid division of labor into food prep, cleaning, home maintenance, set time for music practice…” Micky nudged Peter. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“That…Michael’s secretly the event organizer?” Peter asked, laughing.

“That we might as well be at home, yeah!” Indignant, Micky downed tools, and his vegetable knife was grabbed in an instant, probably by someone who’d be on filling-_in_-latrines duty else. “Peter, what you did earlier, in the town? I got it.” Micky winked and bounced off before Peter could question him or grab him.

He never did see if Micky ‘got it’ but when he waved Peter over, as discreetly as Micky could do anything, he had got them a dirt bike each, for them to quietly push to a safe distance then scramble up the valley towards freedom. Freedom and water—he’d known there was something called a sea there, but there were pools and springs and geysers and gushers and—

“A _fumerole_?” Peter tore his gaze from the hills and mountains surrounding the valley to drop to his knees at the crack in the earth from where puffs of steam billowed.

“Excuse you!” cried Micky, diving for the first hollow dip filled with water, and emerging within seconds, yelping at the heat.

“That must be why that one’s empty,” Peter called over to him in his most helpful tone. He betted with himself that Micky would jump into the next one with space enough, and sure enough he did. After taking a look around at the nearest small lakes and lagoons, Peter stripped to his shorts and joined him, thinking the mud or clay, this being Clay County, it contained, must be good for the skin.

“Oh, man…” Micky ogled a gang of girls at the far end of the mud bath, none of whom had it plastered right into their eyelashes and hair like he did. “Do you think they’re nekkid?”

“You’d never be able to tell under this.” Peter stood, indicating how his body was coated in the clay. Then Micky’s sentence stress struck him. “If _they’re_…you mean _you_ are?”

Micky looked away, and the three chicks moved away. “I’m a child of nature,” he muttered in their wake.

“Okay, fine, but don’t take a leak in the lake,” Peter cautioned.

Micky tried to doo-wop to the words. “That’ll never catch on. Mike won’t go for those lyrics. And why not?”

“I think that water from the big lake there must be the festival water. For showering, Cooking, Drinking…”

Micky looked a little ill, then cheered up at the squeals and cries of two chicks in the tiny spring up ahead. “_Fizzy?_” he echoed, listening to their exclamations. “How can it be?”

“There are soda springs, As in carbon dioxide, not soda pop.” Peter grinned. “I get it now. Half-naked chicks bouncing up and down, shrieking in delight—I get why you wanted to come.”

“To support you, performing, Peter! But can I help it if the perks include bouncing busty bathing beauties in bikinis?” Micky’s innocent face wouldn’t have fooled a blind man.

A little later, Micky’s shorts restored, they walked over the small hills to the salt sea and floated on their fronts then their backs, looking up at the dusty greens and browns of the hills and mountains and the constant blue of the sky. Micky sloshed the water between them and clasped Peter’s hand. He brought it to his mouth and swiped the palm with his tongue.

“Well, no one can complain my diet’s lacking in minerals or nutrients, not when I got me my own salt lick! Peter flavored too.”

Peter found the licking, Micky’s soft yet muscular tongue, more of a turn-on than he’d have imagined. He wriggled and Micky obligingly tongued his fingers then licked between them, precise and agile. That was definitely arousing. “You don’t know what my flavor is,” he replied.

It took a second for Micky to catch on, but he didn’t blush, as Peter might have imagined. He, however, didn’t imagine the,“I remember what your mouth tastes like,” that Micky gave in come-back.

“What? Rain? Storm? Ocean?” Peter asked, harking back to their spring night.

“All of the above and then some,” Micky replied.

_Huh._ Peter threaded his hand more firmly through Micky’s and their joined hands bobbed on the water, making a sweet ripple.

“This is nice.” Micky broke the stretch of silence.

“Umm.”

“Us in water…remind you of anything?”

“We swim and surf almost every day.”

“Okay. Us _alone_ in water…”

Peter raised his head a little to listen to the other bathers, at the pools. But yes, this was relatively private, quiet enough for Micky to talk—and Peter to listen.

“I think about it. That night, back in February,” Micky said. His face filled out with his grin. “At certain times. Alone times…if you get my drift.”

Peter pushed him so he floated away a little, even farther from the edge and any chance festival-goer who might come stumbling upon them. “I get your drift now,” he deadpanned. He paddled his feet to push himself after Micky, surprised and a little flattered that memories of their spur-of-the-moment, not much beyond first base hook-up had stayed with Micky, or so he claimed. “You mean, you want to go again? Or go further?” He felt genuinely curious.

“Sure, why not? If we don’t get nowhere with the ladies, I mean. Then we won’t have to do ourselves, solo.” Micky nodded, as though lining up a last resort against having to jerk himself off was nothing to be ashamed of, and as if his tawdry reasoning had been an elegant, engraved invitation to an epoch-making liaison.

Peter shrugged. “Sure.”

“Seal the deal?”

“Huh?” He squinted over. “You mean—”

“Seal it with a kiss!” Micky’s tone suggested it was obvious. “Come on!” he coaxed. “I’ve had a ton of practice since the last time. Please?”

A combination of push and pull factors—Micky’s pestering and Peter’s curiosity—had Peter leaning over enough to meet Micky halfway. More than halfway, the way Micky held back a little, head on a slight tilt and lips slightly parted. Taking Micky up on his invitation, Peter closed the gap and pressed his lips to Micky’s. He hadn’t aimed so precisely, but his upper lip was between Mickey’s and Micky’s lower lip between his, with the just-right pressure backing up Mick’s claim of practicing.

Peter opened his mouth slightly and Micky gave a soft caress to his tongue to Peter’s, in a manner that suggested training, and Peer doubted this aspect was one that could be practiced on the back of his hand. If teen magazines still suggested that. Micky broke away and looked up through his eyelashes, a coy smile on his face.

“Well, Mi—my man?” he asked.

“You going to lean over and gently stroke my lower lip with your thumb?” Peter inquired, and Micky had the grace to blush. Just a little. “Yeah, I liked that. I like this too…” Which was him ducking Micky and scrambling away. They’d been in there long enough. “And yes. I’m sold.”

Micky’s whoop echoed around the valley.

“Hey look, that sinkhole or whatever it is next to the soda water is free!” Micky pointed, when they reached the springs again. “I’m going over. Gonna dive in, impress the fizzy chicks…”

Peter made no attempt to stop him, even though the unmistakeable rotten egg whiffs coming from that basin had told him what the water probably contained.

“_Sulfur?_” Micky was still repeating, on the ride home, a journey for which Peter was carefully upwind of him.

“But it’s supposed to be good for you. So I should think the amount you swallowed—”

He swerved when Micky did, for him to jump off his bike and hurl. Again.

“Could you please stop that?” Peter begged. “We’re trying to bust back in to camp, remember, meaning stealth is required…”

***

And back at the venue, them having safely snuck in, Peter sliced and diced salad stuff and made a non-committal noise in response to his fellow cooks’ remarks that the eggs smelled strong, but, being from a local farmer’s co-op, as was the rest of the food, they must be fresh, right?

Peter wondered if Micky, just up there uncoiling cables and shinning up poles to hang said cables, was being avoided because of the smell of the sulfur or the color of the iron ore in the pool he’d dived into next, both of which were clinging to him. He had to get a photo for Davy—Micky looked like he’d rusted. Pity there was no way to record a smell. Or, Peter decided, getting another blast, maybe not.

He lost track of Micky for a while in the late afternoon, despite instructions about keeping An Eye On Him—in initial capitals and a Texan accent—still ringing in his ears, when he went to attend a talk on non-violence. Maybe Micky had gone to learn more about how the local growers had formed their co-op, and how their model could be exported. Peter…doubted it, somehow. He wished there were sessions and workshops on subjects like mediation and yoga. Maybe festivals, if they caught on and grew bigger, would include more than just music and issues of the local area where they were being held, as vital as those were, and have more…produce available. And available to buy, in case people didn’t rack up enough ‘volunteer’ points to exchange.

Carrie, when he caught up with the group to practice, wasn’t that keen on the idea, telling him local food stores had wanted to set up temporary kiosks here on the grounds, but the idea had been nixed by the organizers. “Because then local craft shops wanted to get in on it too, moving stalls out here and where would that end? It would be just too commercial.”

“Oh, it’s a matter of finding a balance.” Peter believed that was possible. And when the event started, the late afternoon turning with a sweet ease into music, he saw it in the program itself. He was one of the first few on, part of the earliest performers who were all urban folk revivalists. There was no ‘pure’ folk, and not even any ‘collegiate’ folk-style musicians: it felt like coming into a theater when the play was at its second act.

Micky’s cheers and whoops rang the loudest, giving Peter an idea. “For my next song, I’ll need not a volunteer from the audience, but a special guest. Micky, get up here for _East Virginia_!” It was a song he and Micky harmonized too when jamming or warning up, and Peter loved the blend of his baritone that no one knew what to do with and Micky’s tenor tessitura. He was capable of singing with the power and volume of an operatic tenor…or even countertenor, Peter felt. And the song went well and went over even better.

“You were the best!” Micky said with fierce pride when Peter finished his three-song set and retook his place, and Peter knuckled into his hair in thanks.

“We should do that more. When we perform, I mean.” He’d have to see about arranging more songs for them to vocalize together. Arranging, or even writing. Peter didn’t get much of a chance to relax before the stage and listen—he was soon on again, playing with the Four Winds, who were not pure folk, but one of the next waves of acts whose repertoire was folk-derived songs with introspective lyrics. He closed his eyes to listen to Me and Maguire, after them, who he didn’t know. Folk-styled acoustic guitars, and socially conscious lyrics? Interesting.

“Is it me or is this, well, more like rock and roll?” Micky gestured toward the stage and the subsequent act.

“It’s…folk-based chord changes and progressions. And melodies. But almost a rock sound.” Peter approved of the use of the acoustic twelve-string.

“Hey, I like this!” Micky said of the Wayfarers, on next, and their electric twelve-string guitars. “That ringing guitar—it’s kinda like the Beatles.”

As were the Notions, the following group, who let loose cyclical, chiming guitar riffs. Even Mike, who scorned rock and roll, would like this, Peter betted.

“This is so healthy!” Nina commented of the food being set out at the break, at what seemed much later than halfway through the concert,

“I want chips,” Micky muttered, shuffling his way down the long wooden table, making the sign of the cross at the bowls of pressed salad ingredients and platters of sliced fruit on sticks. “And fries. Real greasy ones too, covered in ketchup. And burgers, with no lettuce or tomato. Oh, and candy. A sixpenny bar of milk chocolate, like Davy calls it.”

“Micky, are you _pregnant_?” Peter couldn’t help it. “I didn’t think my kisses were that potent.”

“Talking of…” Micky lowered his voice and nudged Peter slightly aside.

“Jesus, you’re _not_, are you, Mick?”

“No, I’m not. Not getting anywhere, I mean!” Micky jerked his chin out at the crowd. “Even after being up on stage, I can’t even strike up a conversation without the dames claiming they have an elsewhere to be.”

_Ah._ Peter was just about used to the whiffs of the smell now; others, catching gusts of it, wouldn’t be. And as they’d probably be spending the night in close quarters, he’d have to get Micky to bathe, if the sulfur hadn’t worn off then. Which reminded him— “Tent! We didn’t finish, or start, putting it up.”

“Oh, man! Now I gotta find a chick who’s into me and has her own place.”

“Hey.” Peter pressed his knee into Micky’s. “Case you hadn’t noticed, unlike last time, I’m not exactly surrounded by a harem either.”

“You mean…looks like we’ll be…pitching the tent together?”

“Erecting the pole, and so on and so forth.” Peter couldn’t help but grin.

He also couldn’t help taking out his saved-back cookies, at Micky’s sad face when he gazed again at the healthy fare. He held them up, out of Micky’s eager reach. “If you have at least one piece of fruit.”

“Sure, Mike! I prom—” Micky caught up with what he’d said. “Oh, sorry.”

“No, it’s….” _What?_ The heaviness of realizing that he was _behaving like Mike_ made Peter sit. Then his thoughts slowed and rewound: this wasn’t the first time today Micky had mistakenly called him Mike. He replayed Micky’s voice when he’d almost done it earlier, on the salt sea. “_Well, Mi—”_

But, on that occasion…Peter hadn’t been nagging Micky about his eating habits. No, but he must have been replicating _some_ aspect of Mike’s behavior, _some_ Mike-Micky interaction, for Micky to make that association… And Peter remembered _exactly_ what he and Micky had been doing at the time of Micky’s slip.

“Well, well,” Peter muttered, his delighted grin stretching his face. “That _is_ interesting_._”

Continued in Summer, 1965 part two. Soon.


	4. Summer, 1965 part two

But Peter lived in the moment and he was here to be with friends and, right then, eat some food, not speculate about what a piece of newly learned information might mean one day in the future.

“Who’s this?” he asked of the group taking their places on the stage in the twilight.

“Trevelyan?” Nina squinted at the list of performers Drake held. “Weird name.”

“There was a guy with that surname, back in the Village,” Peter recalled, thinking the guitarist tuning up must be him. “Jon. He was a cool head. Righteous. Sang with a cousin I didn’t know so well.” Who was probably the other guy, if their family resemblance was anything to go by.

“They’ve got this girl singer with them now. Hispanic. South American. Supposed to have a good range…” Carrie trailed off as the trio began. “_Christ almighty!_” came her verdict, after the first song, one echoed by the audience as a whole, as their cheers and applause testified. “And I thought I had a strong soprano voice.”

“What’s her name?” Nina pointed at the girl on stage.

“Maria,” Peter answered, his eyes glued to the trio.

“That a guess?” Nina exchanged a look with Carrie. It wasn’t like Peter to make assumptions or quips about people based on their looks or ethnicity, and the woman was slim and lean-muscled, with very tan skin and thick black hair, center-parted and long.

“And you do have a strong soprano. She has a rich one, with vibrato.” Peter was still staring at the Latina woman, and made his way to the bottom of the stage steps when the trio finished to loud applause that thickened in the evening sky and rang to the distant mountains. “Maria ?” he said.

“Peter! _El mono con cinturón torcido!_” The woman jumped down the steps and into his arms and he gave his answering, ‘“I just met a girl called Maria!’”

Their hug was long and hard and as he still wore his belt turned to the side—probably always would—the buckle didn’t press into her. He’d forgotten she was taller than average, but she was still as slim and wiry as he remembered.

“I wondered if you are here,” she said, tilting her head back.

He became aware of Micky sidling up to them and released Maria, straightening her simple almost ankle-length cotton dress that he’d crumpled. “Micky, this is Maria Navarro.”

She laughed, her dark-brown, almost black, eyes dancing. “Trevelyan. Maria Trevelyan now.” She pointed her thumb behind her to Jon.

“Oh?” Peter asked. “So you came to the US, to New York, like you wanted—”

“And wanted to be able to stay with more security than I could manage alone. I met Jon, waiting…”

_To be called up._ Peter understood that, and also understood that being married would put a man further down the list. He was also familiar with the mutual-assistance ethos of the Village, of the artists there: people shared ideals, had common dreams and offered support to one another. He’d…done a version of the same, reason he’d been unable to help Maria more, but he knew she understood. He examined her face. “And you’re—”

“_Feliz._ _Si._” She smiled, looking as happy as she’d said.

“Ah! So that entire convo was in Spanish!” Micky seemed pleased to have found the reason he hadn’t been able to follow their verbal shorthand.

“Sorry.” Peter grinned. “Maria’s from Venezuela. We met briefly a year or so back.” And were picking up where they’d left off, easy, seamless. “She’s a rich soprano with three octave range.”

“Ha, three octaves and two notes now.” Maria held up two fingers.

“Really? Neat!” She’d been working hard on her range when they’d met.

“The songs you played really showcased it,” Micky enthused.

Peter greeted Jon and his cousin and introduced Micky, who was now mouthing, “_Venezuela?_” and flicking his gaze between Peter and Maria, his brain almost clicking as it ticked over. Jon said he wanted to go catch up with old friends. Peter understood that too. It had been a big part of why he’d wanted to come.

“All right?” Jon said to Maria, but not as if asking for permission to go do something, either timidly, as though Maria were domineering, or sarcastically, as a passive-aggressive workaround to her dominance. No, this was more a low-key checking on her wellbeing in an unfamiliar place, the way Micky did for his sisters, for instance, and it gave Peter the key to their relationship. Micky’s eyes widened at Jon’s words and his nudging a gentle elbow into Maria. He got it, Peter saw.

“Yes. I want to catch up with Peter,” Maria replied. She kissed Jon and Simon goodbye and took Peter’s arm. “And I want some decent food. American food,” she stressed, wrinkling her nose at the green and pleasant trestle table. “I’m crazy for burgers, in New York. Oh, and deep-fried corndogs. And bacon, egg, and cheese in a roll. And—”

“Oh, stop!” Micky begged, holding his stomach.

“Folk festival overdose,” Peter explained.

“And I need to bathe. We drove straight from the studio to the airport to here. I didn’t even check in yet.”

“Checked in?” Micky echoed Maria, his ears pricking up. “To…”

***

“The Hot Springs Resort and Spa,” he read with satisfaction from the wooden plaque as Maria drove in and to the reception, past several low white buildings with orange-brown roofs set amidst trees and bushes and huge pots of flowering plants. Flambeaux in holders lit up the tasteful scene. “Yes. This is what folk come to the desert for!”

“Rich folk,” Peter muttered a few minutes later when Maria, checked in and key obtained, unlocked her single-story cottage, surprised Micky wasn’t whistling his appreciation of the décor. But when he turned to him, Micky had gone, presumably to explore. Peter refused to react. Not his keeper. _And he’s probably gone to find a phone, check in with the others, as we arranged._ He ignored the late hour and that there was a telephone right here, in front of him. “Nice.”

“Oh, Amici Records are paying.” Maria cast a glance around and dumped her bag. Peter placed his instruments down with more care. “And when Jon wanted to come here in the middle of recording, Langsett Music flew us.”

“Trying to sign the group?” Peter guessed. “No, you. Oh—” 

“They don’t get me without the others. Either as us, or I insist on them in the band.” Maria’s iron tone laid down an edict, one Peter knew was now law. Good. Not that he’d doubted her loyalty, shown by her coming all the way here in the middle of studio time, just because Jon wanted to.

He followed her through the small house and out of the glass doors onto a patio. A short winding path took them to an herb garden, containing a pool, and Maria breathed in deep and scratched at her hair. The deeper lines on her face and the shadows under her eyes eased a little. “That’s what I need.” She pointed at the shower in its low, three-sided enclosure, a far cry from the chain-operated one on the beach near the pad.

There were even small bottles of shampoo and liquid soap, Peter discovered, when he found himself joining her, both of them still clothed and using the shower as a clothes wash too. Maria signalled for him to bend his head so she could lather his hair for him, and he helped her work the shampoo and water through hers, ripping a small plastic comb from its plastic wrapper for her. Again, the effortlessness to their interaction, their being together wrapped around him.

“I hope your friend isn’t lost,” Maria said, squeezing out her water-darkened tresses. “There’s a maze here, it said.”

“He’ll find his way back. Especially now,” Peter added, as a server set down a platter of burgers and fries that Maria must have ordered at reception. A second waiter uncapped bottles of beer. The place felt dreamlike, the sensation heightened by being there unexpectedly, with someone he’d met in a foreign country, who was now drying herself with a towel, like him, and…getting a pedicure from a spa professional, and chugging back beers to wash down greasy food she was scarfing late at night.

He laughed. There was so much he wanted to ask her, about contacting the informal organization based at the Dove of Peace café he’d told her about, arriving in Greenwich Village, marrying a stranger, launching a career stateside…

Maria glanced over. “I’m fine, _mono_. Tell me you.”

He could see she was. She’d make sure she was. Her self-containment yet ease at being with others and putting them at ease intrigued him anew. A squawk made them look up. “Micky?” Peter wondered if he should mention the—

“Cute parrot.” Maria held out a fry to the big bright red bird on Micky’s shoulder. “Interesting…marmoset, I think, too.” She gave a second fry to the furry creature on Micky’s other shoulder. “You found the menagerie. It said there was one.”

Peter thought the primate was a capuchin, but said nothing. Mike would have reprimanded Micky for that and for his table manners or lack thereof, the way he dived onto what was left, shoved it into his mouth and swallowed it without chewing, but Peter merely watched. It didn’t break the dreamlike feel, didn’t mar the soft sway of the lanterns and the delicate herbal perfume to the air. Even the soft chattering of the creatures accompanying Micky added to it.

Later, Maria’s hand in his, her occasional trills of song, with Micky’s crystalline voice twining around them, filled the garden. When had she stretched out her newly pampered feet on Micky’s lap, wads of cotton wool between the toes? It didn’t matter. Her _here, now, this _way of being extending to Micky. It…fitted.

As did the three of them heading back to the cottage. When Maria went in first, Micky threw a look at Peter, but he couldn’t decipher it, and before he could ask him to explain, Micky was exclaiming over the freebies from the record companies. And when he turned back, Maria was running a hand down Peter’s face.

“Yes, I want you to stay,” Maria said, as if answering a question. “But would you mind taking a shower?” That the second _you_ was different, smaller, was made clear when she turned to Micky. “You smell weird and I think you’re a strange color. It seems unnatural.”

“What? I—” Micky dashed to a mirror and let out a shriek. He fled for the bathroom, returning to snatch up the tin of bon-bons, then vanished again.

Slow, easy, Maria pulled off her dress and hung it up for the morning sunlight to dry it, smoothing out the wrinkles as she did so. Naked, she passed a clothes hanger to Peter for him to do the same with his pants and shirt. He slipped off his boxers too, laughing at Maria’s query had he been to church, he was dressed so formally? He caught her face in his palm to feel her skin, and it turned into a kiss Maria eventually broke to open the bottle of champagne.

“Health,” Peter said, clinking his glass against her.

“Pure life,” responded Maria, translating directly too, and slow smiles curled their mouths as they drank then wandered to the sleeping area.

She took his empty glass and placed it with hers on the bedside table and sat, pulling him to lie down with her so they could kiss again.

“Hey, the bathroom has a fizzy tub—oh.” Micky, towel around his hips, froze, like an insect trying to blend into the rock under it.

“Mick, it’s cool,” Peter said, reaching out a hand, curious as to how he’d react.

“Very. You’re both so _mono_, I can’t choose.” Maria reached out too. Peter laughed.

“Heh, just, I’ve…never…”

“Been to a spa before?” Peter finished when a blushing Micky floundered.

“Yes! A mixed-bathing spa, I mean. A…naturist spa. Not that I haven’t… thought about them. Thought about them a _whole_ lot,” Micky finished, on a wistful note, creeping a little nearer.

“Then let me get you the complimentary first time at the spa drink.” Peter, idly wondering if Micky had even, erm, been to a spa for married and non-married people before, or for US and non-US people before, signalled to him to lose the towel and take his place with Maria.

He went looking for another glass but couldn’t find one. Seemed the champagne had only come with two. He heard the bed creak so guessed Micky had climbed on. At least, there’d been no crashing thud and shout of “Geronimo” along with a startled female shriek, which was reassuring, and Peter thought he heard kissing, which was more so.

Peter got distracted by the tropical fruit basket. Was that weeping willow type fall of black berries _açaí_? He had no idea what the small, wrinkled purple-potato-looking fruit could be. Deciding Micky could reuse one of their glasses, he hefted the champagne and returned to the bedroom area, to see Maria lying very still and Micky sitting back even stiller, and looking a little scared.

“What…” _Did you do?_ Peter stopped himself asking.

“I don’t _know_!” Micky answered anyway.

Peter set the bottle down and bent to check on Maria, setting two fingers to the side of her windpipe, then lifting an eyelid. “She’s asleep!” he said, relief flooding his voice.

“That’s worse!” Micky hissed, his sad clown face thickening.

_Worse than what_, Peter didn’t ask. “No, she was exhausted, Mick. They flew in and went straight to the festival after recording nonstop for days.” _Probably._ “Plus she was guzzling beer and now champagne when she’s such a lightweight that she really shouldn’t drink.”

Micky’s, “Oh,” was still dejected.

“D’you want to carry on?” Peter sipped from his refilled glass, then indicated the bed with it before placing it on the bedside table.

“_What?_” Micky looked from the unconscious woman to Peter, his face the most shocked Peter had ever seen it, and almost tempting Peter to keep Mick’s misapprehension going. But Peter settled for an eye roll in Mick’s direction before scooping Maria up and settling her in the single bed on the other side of the room.

“You have a last-resort scenario mapped out,” he reminded Micky, returning to the big bed and sitting on the side, facing Micky.

“And a boner sticking out,” Micky admitted, uncrossing his legs.

“Decent one too.” Peter hadn’t seen Micky’s cock in this state, only felt it against his, covered by Micky’s clothes. He’d thought it’d seemed a good size then and yeah, it filled out nicely from what he was used to seeing on the slack.

“Oh…thanks?” Micky took his first open glance at Peter’s cock. “_Damn_, you’re big, Pete. Oh! Is _that_ why they call you Big Peter?”

“Micky, I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who’s ever called me that,” Peter told him.

“I kinda thought you’d be…” Micky made a gesture that looked like he was stroking down a pony’s nose then cupping it,. “A _roundhead_,” he clarified, Peter not getting it but wondering how the pony was breathing. “Roundheads mean circumcised and—”

“Cavaliers are uncut. That’s a weird thing to know.”

“Oh, Davy told me it. It’s what schoolkids call it, there.”

Peter laughed. “And did he tell you that’s how they pick sides for teams, for sports at school, there?”

“No!” Micky breathed.

“Yeah. Well, I guess Davy didn’t go to that sort of school.” _Lucky kid._ All that talking and thinking and reminiscing was threatening to detumesce him. Peter took a huge gulp of champagne from the bottle and curled a hand around Micky’s nape, bringing him nearer. Near enough to press his mouth to, giving Micky a blast of wine in a deliberate echo of how he’d helped him to smoke a joint. Micky swallowed easily, licking his lips after. Peter gave a lazy tug to his cock, keeping himself hard, and Micky’s eyes were riveted to what Peter was doing.

“Hey, when I imagined…a mixed-bathing spa, it was sort of more women than men in the mix, you know? But I was curious to see and well, be _involved_ in a more male ratio mixed-bathing session,” Micky added hastily. “Just…I’ve…never been to a _male_ spa before. A naturist one, I should say.”

Peter understood. Well, it wasn’t that tricky a code to crack. “You don’t have to take out a full membership, right from the off,” he reassured him. “You can have, like, a taster session.”

“I…dunno about _that_, Pete.” Micky pressed his lips together in a thin line.

“I didn’t mean it lit— A practical session, shall we say, then? Try out some, erm, hands-on activities?”

“Oooh, yeah!”

“And can we stop that spa analogy now?”

“Oh God, yes please. So, how does this work?”

“Really?” Peter narrowed his eyes at him. “You have a stack of skin mags in the john back home, some of them…well-used looking, and you’re—”

“No, this!” Micky waggled an upside-down finger between him and Peter. “Is it like…or more like…or even…”

Peter stared, bemused. The hand mimes, Micky using both hands, near his own and Peter’s crotch Micky gave to illustrate his words looked like nothing so much as a blend of someone doing the monkey, someone else the frug and a third party shaking a cocktail.

“Mick, just…let it happen, okay? Peter took another sip of champagne and passed the bottle over. Micky drank deep and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. He passed the bottle back and Peter set it down and dabbed a paper napkin at him.

Micky smirked. “This where you tell me I got a real pretty mouth?”

“This is where I do this,” said Peter, shoving Micky flat and lying so his hips pinned down half of Micky’s pelvis, and kissing him, so his tongue shut Micky up. He took a good grip of Micky’s cock and stroked from root to tip, getting a coat of precum. He thought him bringing his hand to his mouth to taste it would freak Micky out. He enjoyed the feel of Micky’s cock in his hand, and squeezed and worked him, Micky’s release aiding the glide of his rigid dick through Peter’s tight fist.

Peter leaned up a little to take in the sight of Micky’s face in the throes of the pleasure being brought to him. It had an edge to it, a rawness, and Micky’s gasps-becoming-whimpers added to it, making the experience even richer. Micky thrust, powering through Peter’s grip.

“_Ahem?_” Peter dipped his gaze down and slid so his lower half no long imprisoned Micky.

“Uh?” Micky grunted.

“You’re not the only one in this bed.” Peter thrust against him to make his meaning clear.

“Ohhh.” Within seconds, Micky’s hold on Peter had Peter arching back, his hand stilling on Micky. “It’s too—”

“No – I like it. It’s good,” Peter reassured him. It was different to how he’d have jerked himself, of course. They had a fast rhythm going, no space in it for subtlety, to explore, to learn each other’s turn-ons, to heighten things. Although from seeing hickeys on Micky’s neck a couple of times, he suspected that was a sensitive area for him.

The pace and force made Peter’s head spin. He buried his face in the crook of Micky’s neck until Micky’s halting, “Could…would…” and his slightly shame-faced look made Peter understand Micky wanted to kiss. And when Peter did, using his tongue to overpower Micky’s, Micky’s hips rocked until he was fucking Peter’s fist.

Peter felt his climax draw up and could sense Micky’s approaching too. Hell, he could see it in the tightening of Micky’s stomach and hear it in the sharper edge to his moans. “It’s gonna be…messy,” he gasped.

“Yeah,” Micky agreed on a groan. He pressed tighter, his face mashed into Peter’s, and thrust harder. “_Fuck._”

That word, then, in that tone to Micky’s voice… Desire? Yearning? It tipped Peter over and he gave himself over to his climax, to the heat and the throb and the need for release Micky was drawing from him, none of which he could contain. He fell onto Micky, shooting fast and hard onto his stomach and torso, their writhing bodies smearing it between them.

“Peter!” Micky wriggled to get his face free and his hand to his cock—Peter had slowed on it.

Peter shuddered. Micky’s rhythm had meant no coaxing to pulse out the last gasps, when Peter relished his entire body tightening and relaxing in _ritardano_, to _a poco a poco cesura_. No, this was _rubato_, speeding up and then slowing down the tempo at the discretion of the conductor. Still quivering, he wrapped Micky closer and worked his cock with him, making him climax in seconds, his cum spurting to join Peter’s. Peter kept a hold of him, slowing the movement of his hand, whispering encouragement to Micky—not filth; he had a feeling Micky wouldn’t appreciate it. Not…yet—to prolong his orgasm. The sight of Micky’s agony abating and him coming back to himself was entrancing.

“Peter—”

“It’s okay.” Whatever he’d been trying to say, was thinking—things were okay with Peter and it was important that they were to Micky too. He watched until Micky’s flush faded and his usual spark crept back. Peter wrenched the sheet free from its tuck at the foot of the bed and pulled it up, for them to clean themselves, after which he flung it back again. “Kiss goodnight?” he offered Micky, still not sure how he was reacting to…this.

Micky nodded, his familiar grin in place, and that was where Peter dropped his kiss, just a touch of his lips. Micky had enough about him to return the press, the pressure, before dropping to his back, eyes closed. Peter watched for a few seconds—Micky was asleep.

Peter stirred a little later, not aware he’d dropped off too, and had to think where he was and who was the woman leaning over the bed and pulling back a corner of the sheet over him, feeling the sheet under him and saying move over, it seemed clean and dry there…

“I got lonely.” Maria climbed in and stretched out alongside him. “Forgive me being poor hostess?”

With a huffed laugh, Peter turned them both onto their sides, his front to her back and cuddled an arm over her. Micky turned, his breath warm on Peter’s neck, and stretched a hesitant skinny arm over him and Maria. Peter pushed his hips into nothingness when he awoke, then patted the empty bed. Maria was gone.

“She left a note.” Micky’s voice came from near the living area. “I think…something about a message and this room and the car? I only really know nouns, in Spanish, see, and not complicated ones.”

Peter held out a hand for it. “She got a message to say there was some problem with the recording, so she got the hotel to take her straight back to the airport to return to New York. This room and the service is paid for and could we take the car back to the festival for the others?”

“Wow.” Micky sat on the bed. “You know verbs and tenses _and_ the conditional as well.”

Peter aimed a lazy mock punch and a quick once-over at him. Micky looked relaxed and content and that was enough for Peter. “I know how to wash clothes and hang them to dry as well,” he said, taking down his soap-clean and sun-warm pants and shirt. Because he’d bet—yep. Micky’s were wet wrinkles of fabric on the floor of the shower. The knock at the door was room service: Maria had sent two huge breakfasts their way.

Peter napped by the pool until they had to leave. He meant to call the pad, but there wasn’t time. Not with the dealing with the distress fireworks Micky sent up when he was lost in the maze, and, oh God, the thing with the menagerie…

***

It felt like years later that Mike stared at them pulling up in and getting out of the small bright red walk-in delivery truck with their backpacks. He carried on staring as the Metro Van stayed there, wasn’t driven off to its next stop on its multi-stop round by someone else, its official driver, as might be expected. He rolled himself out from under the Pontiac and Peter guessed Micky hadn’t seen him, by the way he bounced by him into the pad without a greeting.

“How…was it?” Mike got to his feet, a just-there black smudge on one cheek.

“Oh…” Peter gave a careless shrug and sought for a change of subject. “Nice bib overalls.”

“Bib and brace.” Mike rolled his shoulders in the denim. “I’m a—”

“Texan,” Peter finished for him. “What were you doing to the Monkeemobile?”

“The… Oh, Yeah. The steering was pulling to one side. Not responsive enough. Coulda been a problem on the freeway, with those speeds. Happens with new engines, before they’re run in, so thought I’d better correct it. And running in means limiting the revs for the first thousand miles or so and changing gear a lot, neither of which Micky does, so it didn’t seem a good i…”

“Wait. That’s why you vetoed us…” Peter swung between being pleased at Mike’s care and concern and irritated by it. “You know cars? Engines?” he asked, knowing what he meant.

“I’m vehicle maintenance certified. Not mechanic certified. Not the flashy engineering stuff. The nuts and bolts.”

“Huh.” Peter watched Mike replace a tool in the metal box.

“Say, Peter, where’s the tent?”

“It’s…” He stopped himself in time from giving an automatic answer to the sudden question. Mike…could be one tricky little critter if you didn’t watch out. Then the weekend’s events pressed in on him. “Siezedinforfeitureinlieuofwork,” he muttered.

“Huh?”

“Andredistributedtothecommunity.”

“_What?_”

Nothing. It’s around.” Peter waved a vague hand.

“So, no problems? Nothing you wanna tell me?”

“_Noooo?_”

“Like, why did I get a phone call from a fancy spa? In particular, from its zoo? From a keeper enraged at animals being let out to roam free and given a non-balanced diet?”

“You sure you’re not talking about Micky there?” Peter tried his halfway-to-winsome smile. Shameless, he undid a button.

“And before that from a sheriff’s department? From a town I never heard off and when I looked it up on the map, it was en route to the Dena Valley? Where you were headed? Something about a bell tower and—”

About to break down and confess how…_difficult_ things had been, Peter caught sight of Davy waving madly at hm through the bedroom window. _The hell?_ “And what about you, Michael? Is there anything _you’d_ like to tell _me_?”

“Like?” Mike didn’t flinch as Peter, believing a good defence was an offense, stepped up to him.

“Like, why does Davy appear to be in quarantine? At least, I think he is, as far as I can tell, through the bars that have been added to the bedroom window? And I’m going by the sheets hung up and smelling of”—he sniffed—“carbolic solution. And the official-looking notice and red cross on the front door.”

“Ain’t _quarantine_,” Mike scoffed. “You see a yellow and black flag flying?”

Peter hated that he checked the roof to see. “But Davy’s—”

“In isolation,” Mike muttered.

“He’s ill? No…” Peter understood cagey when he saw it. In front of him in denim bib overalls. “You needed a bit of peace! From him and his stream of girls!” he crowed.

“And their parents. And one's husband. Yeah.” Mike exhaled. “Pete, it’s—”

“Been real awful,” Peter finished for him. “Never again, on my own with Micky.” He sat in the car’s backseat. “He’s a two-man job.”

“Huh!” Mike dropped next to him, took off his wool hat and ran his hand through his dark hair. “So’s Davy.”

“If I ever say I want to go away somewhere, don’t let me,” Peter begged, tugging Mike’s sleeve.

“Or, next time when you got somewhere you wanna go, I…could come too.”

“I’d like that!” Peter’s enthusiasm turned Mike’s diffidence into a grin. Peter thought of all the things that would have been nice to share with Mike that weekend. “And me too, with you, when you have to go back south, say, for, like, a chili cook-off or cactus carving contest, or whatever.”

“I’d like that,” Mike echoed. “Always need a hand stirrin’ ma beans an’ managin’ ma succulents.”

“Really? Oh.” Mike’s dry humor still shucked Peter.

“But yeah, I’d like that.” Mike wasn’t joking now.

“Good. We—”

“_Peter!_”

He hated that bright ring of enthusiasm in Micky’s voice. It never boded well. 

“_The San Pasqual Indian Reservation is having a Ghost Dance ceremony next month, open to the public!_” Micky shouted. “_We should go!_”

“Where you going there, shotgun?” Mike queried, leaning back as Peter bolted.

Peter froze. _Shotgun?_ Did Mike know his nickname? His story? _No._ “I’m gonna hide in here…” He climbed into the Monkeemobile’s trunk. “Until Micky’s forgotten about this latest brilliant idea.”

“Oh.” Mike got out of the car and ambled around it. He caught up an opened bottle of beer and took a mouthful. “Give it ten minutes, tops, then. Drink?”

Peter stuck up an arm and Mike passed down the bottle he’d drunk from. He didn’t wipe the top before he handed it over and so neither did Peter before he drank from it. He held eye contact when he placed his lips where Mike’s had been and took a long swallow. Mike didn’t look away either and followed the ripples Peter’s throat made when he drank. And when Peter lowered the bottle and smiled his thanks, Mike smiled…his appreciation.

_Good,_ thought Peter. _Absence, heart fonder and all that. All the hassle, all the strife—worth it. _And he was very curious to see what came next.


	5. Winter, 1965 part one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The location is real, and I used some of its details too, but the characters and history, events and incidents, are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner, for entertainment purposes. No harm is intended. I have the utmost respect for magic in all its forms.

Peter rotated the wire rack of postcards once more, his choices narrowed down to two. One card was more arty, the photo focusing on the foreground, and taken not dead center but slightly from one side. It made the pedestrian street blur the farther it stretched into the background, the buildings and trees in the far distance seeming to make a closed dead-end of the street, although Peter knew it wasn’t.

That 'more on one side than the other' angle forced the expanse of sky above the buildings to dip into a V shape. He liked the naïve-art feel given by the patch of sky being the bright sky blue a child might color it, just as the water in the fountain that took up the foreground gleamed a literal aqua blue. _Beautiful Santa Monica Mall_ was written across the top of the sky, ranged left, and yet with the blues, and the greens of the trees, and the terracotta base and dancing white spray of the fountain, you had to look for a few seconds to realize the picture was an outdoor LA mall, not something more European. He snorted, thinking that the _trompe l’oeil_ was probably due to the large sign saying EUROPA, the most prominent store name and the one that leaped out at the beholder.

But he thought Elizabeth might like the other better. It was plain, non-nonsense, with _The Mall–Santa Monica, California_ written in the same cursive as on the other card, this time in the top right-hand corner. The name of the state was underneath the other four words, all by itself as if whoever had set the type had thought he was addressing an envelope. Peter held the cards up to the December sunlight. This lettering was a slightly darker brown. There was a lot of brown in the picture, giving the whole composition, the whole scene, a visual link to the J.C. Penney Co., store, whose art deco building took up a huge chunk of the postcard’s right side.

Oh. Peter peered behind him at one of the low brick enclosures around the mall’s series of reflecting pools, and the flat inlaid bricks making up the ornamental paths among and in between the pools, plants and stores. If not Penney’s brown, they complemented the corporate shade. Hmm. Didn’t the store’s general manager play some part in the construction of this space?

Unable to decide, Peter thought he’d get both. In addition to Zizi, there was usually someone who needed writing to at any given point in time. His brother would scratch his head and laugh at the choice of postcard—Peter could even send it for his birthday. He went into the Midnight Bookstore to pay for the cards and get stamps, and greet Sam and whoever else was working. When his feet started to take him, like he was wearing automatic shoes, deeper inside to the religion and philosophy section, he forced himself to make his purchase and leave. He’d dawdled enough and had to get back to the others.

It was interesting observing them without being a participant in their interaction, for once, and seeing them unawares, how they might look to a stranger, to any of the small crowd gathered to watch Micky, perhaps. Peter could feel Micky’s energy from here, catch Mike’s slight anxiety at Micky’s performance, Davy’s mainly happiness for Mick tempered with a dash of…not _wanting_ it to go wrong, not _willing_ it to, but if it did—

“Hey.” Mike nodded at him when he saw him. “Get your postcard?”

_Yes, I remembered what I went to buy, thanks_, Peter answered the unspoken bit, the _Mike checking up on me_ bit and rustled the paper bag, making sure the store name was visible so Mike could see he hadn’t gone somewhere else and bought something random instead. He took his ballpoint pen from his pocket and held that up to, in corroboration—he could write on the card, or cards. He stuck out the tip of his tongue to indicate he had stamps he could lick onto the cards too.

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!” Micky drank in the applause. Quite a lot of it, really, considering the small post-Christmas, pre-New-Year-sales crowd. “And for my next trick…”

He was moving on from card manipulation to coin tricks, Peter saw. “He’s getting better.”

“Yeah, as long as no one judges him.” Davy pulled his jacket closed. Peter never understood how Davy could be cold in LA when he was from England. Mike the Texan needing a sheepskin jacket, Peter understood, but—

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mike cut in.

“Haven’t you noticed?” Davy jerked his chin at Micky. “Boy Wonder there can’t deal with anyone heckling, or knocking or questioning his ‘powers’. If they do, he goes straight into an impersonation or some other bit of schtick, loses his thread. Loses it, sometimes.”

Peter hoped…Davy wasn’t here just in case that transpired today. No, they were shopping, and that Micky had a venue here for live practice before an audience to help him deal with performing solo, well, that was good. And if Peter didn’t exactly agree with Mike’s edict that they couldn’t all go off at the same time and leave Micky alone, or even two at a time and leave Micky with just one of them— Well, on reflection, maybe he did agree with that.

“He’s doing well.” Mike led the applause for the vanishing and producing trick, the coin seemingly disappearing from one of Micky’s outstretched palms to reappear in the other.

“It’s no big deal being in front of a live audience, even on your own,” Davy the theater kid decreed. “And you didn’t think he’d stick at it,” he reminded Mike, a tinge of maliciousness coloring the edges of his words.

“I was wrong.”

Oh. Peter liked that. And wanted to add to it. “You were wrong about this, too.” He indicated the open-air pedestrian Santa Monica mall. “You complained nonstop when they closed down Third Street back in April.”

“Not so much that as at the three-minute blast of car horns they gave to mark the start of the construction project.” Screwing up his face to a goofy setting, Mike stick his forefinger in his ear and waggled it in memory.

“And you didn’t come to the opening last month. Enjoyed the freebies we brought back though,” Davy threw in.

“I like it fine now, okay?”

You could only push Mike so far. “I like it too,” Peter agreed, meaning the mix of little shops and bigger stores, and the restaurants, a couple of which they’d played in, and the club, which they were arranging to play it, Third Street being about a mile from the pad.

“This place is just so big!” marvelled a first-timer passing them.

“They’re gonna have much bigger malls in the future, indoor mostly,” the guy with her told her. “Those places are the future! Gonna get bigger and higher and fuller, be a draw for the whole community, coming together. I can’t see that ever ending, now it’s begun.”

“Food for thought,” Mike commented.

“Talking of…” Davy’s chick antenna had made him spin round, and now he nudged Peter, waggling his eyebrows at the small blonde making her way to the kiosk they were all huddled near. Micky was never moved on from this space here, and in addition had the right to use the folding table from inside the kiosk, because the owner thought he’d bring along trade. Micky got practice in front of a live, hopefully non-judgmental audience, and they got free drinks from the lovely Beatrice.

She scrunched up her pert little nose at Peter as she took over from the guy who’d worked the stand all morning. It was part of her smile, and made him smile back at her. He pretended not to hear Davy’s, “You’re in there! Make a sodding move! Seal the bloody deal!” He nudged Peter forward. For a little critter, Davy was strong and Peter had to steady himself against the corner of the kiosk.

“Ma’am.” Stepping forward, Mike mimed a two-finger tipping back of an imaginary hat. A Stetson. Peter could almost see it. “Miss Beatrice,” he self-corrected. Her name badge loomed large on her tiny frame.

“Bea!” she told him, not for the first time, taking a brisk cloth to the counter.

“Bea.” Mike couldn’t do much southern-ing, not with that one syllable. “Bea, will today be the day y’all make me the happiest man in the whole of Santa Monica?”

_Huh?_ Peter totally got Davy’s eyebrows-to-the-hairline reaction. Even for Mike, pouring it on as if from a ladle, this was—

“Iffen you play your cards right.” Bea’s hair was too short to twirl around a finger, with it clipped under her paper hat for work, but her Southern Belle response was uncanny. Mike’s face looked like Peter was feeling.

“He’s not _proposing_, is he?” Davy breathed in Peter’s ear. “Marriage, I mean?”

If Mike was, it seemed to be news to him, although he smoothed out any surprise before it took hold of his expression.

“Micky’s the one with the cards,” Peter pointed out, his tone helpful. “Well, you missed that bit, and he’s onto coin tricks now, but I bet he’d do some more card stuff, if we asked.”

“Why don’tcha ask me again, Michael?” simpered Bea.

“Would, heh, well, would you do me honor of lettin’ me take you on a date, Bea?”

“Where?” she flashed back at him.

“Ah.”

Peter knew the tenor of that _ah_. He’d even raise it to an _oh_. They were broke. Sure, they’d played a string of winter parties and Christmas balls, just as they had fall events and Hallowe’en dances, but that had just allowed them to catch up with the rent. Barely.

“Well, when we play the Hive, I’ll offer you best seat in the house!” Mike pointed down the street to the club.

“The Dive?” Davy grimaced. It wasn’t exactly the most boss or groovy of clubs and was a long way from the Strip, or Sunset.

Bea scrunched her nose a little more and leaned right over the counter, beckoning Mike close. Looking a little apprehensive, he went. Bea leaned even closer, her lips to his ear but her eyes locked with Peter's. “Do better than that and I’ll think about it, cowboy,” she stage-whispered, then stood upright. “Orange Julius all round?” she asked, her tone back to business, until she said, "Extra...juice in yours, Mike?" and winked at Peter.

***

“We should’ve played more college gigs.” Davy, ahead with Micky, walked backward, to face Mike and Peter and reopen the dispute.

“No, we shouldn’t.”

“We’d have more cash; you could’ve taken B—”

“We had the meeting about the number of frat parties we’d play at, Davy,” Peter felt obliged to point out, after Mike’s flat rebuttal. Funny, when Micky was the one with the flat butt. Peter had a good view of it from here. He liked it, just as much as he liked Davy’s athletically rounded rear end and Mike’s—

“Because we don’t wanna be known as being ‘a frat-rock band, whipping up frat boys and their dates by playin’ loud riffs, with assertive vocals.’”

“Michael—”

“Nor do we wanna ‘play like we’re trying to win a battle of the bands contest by being the loudest and the fastest.’”

“You ever gonna let that review in the _Santa Monica Daily_ go?” Micky asked. “’Cause you really should.”

“If I ever find out who writes that _Musical Mark_ column, leaves those uncool reviews…” Mike’s right hand balled into a fist. “Near enough every band in the area’s been trashed, man!”

Except for the Jolly Green Giants, what with Mark being their lead singer. Peter decided anew not to say anything. Mike would figure it out, by a process of elimination. Davy faced front and they carried on, heading for the Music Box, to read any new ads and listen to the new records. It felt almost parental, him and Mike at the back, the others in front. It was a role Peter could dip in and out of though, whereas Mike seemed more stuck in it.

“Do you feel you should be pushing one of us in a stroller?” Micky called over his shoulder, in that way they all seemed to have of jumping in and out of the others’ thoughts and imagination.

“Ha ha.” Davy pushed Micky instead. “Fellas, here’s where I love ya and leave ya. I’m meeting the lovely Luisa for lunch.”

“Don’t forget to ask for the kiddy menu!” Micky yelled to Davy’s departing back. He squinted. “What does he want two of?”

“What?” Mike asked.

“Well, he’s got the back of his hand to us, and he’s holding up two fingers?”

Peter felt Mike was glad to get home after that. His turn to gather the mail from the table outside and sort it, so he did, Micky snatching up his. One of his magazines, by the size and thickness of the brown wrapper envelope, Peter guessed. That would be Micky gone for the foreseeable. Yeah, he was slinking off already.

“Guess it’s me on lunch duty?” Mike headed for the sink.

“Guess?” Peter couldn’t resist it. “You should _know_, with that organizer. All those columns and rows and colors and—”

“Missiles?”

Peter ducked the dishrag, grinning. Mike had loosened up nicely, over the year and a bit they’d all been roomies, had had the edges knocked off him, by the other three. Well, they all had, Peter supposed. He’d understood for a while now what had made him agree to share a house in the first place with the uptight Texan, despite questioning his own judgment in the very early days, when he’d considered this move as a temporary one, the place a waystation to be moved on from.

He took a heftier share of the credit for that, for getting Mike to relax. Oh, not just in him being Peter, a free-spirited, going with the flow influence: introducing Mike to dope had helped greatly too.

“_Oh my God!_” came in an ear-splitting yell from the bathroom.

“Fuck’s _sake_, Mick!” Mike’s response came on auto-pilot. “And shut the damned door when you’re…”

“Busy?”

“Reading!” Mike added to Peter’s cut-in.

“_Peter!_” Micky shouted.

“Erm…” Peter looked at Mike. This was new. “Can it wait?” he called.

“Peter!” Micky appeared at the bathroom door, magazine in hand. “Look at my _Magic Wand_!”

“Ya gotta open your eyes to look, shotgun.” Mike’s voice sounded amused to Peter’s right. “And don’t fret. Seems to be something in his magazine, not something he’s…”

Thankful Mike let that thought trail off, Peter looked, at a magazine, and not a skin mag, but something about…magic?

“My ASMA journal.” Micky tapped it in impatience.

“Ya got asthma, Mick?” Mike put the back of his hand to Micky’s forehead. “I didn’t know that.”

“_ASMA_, the American Society of Magical Arts. Its magazine, the _Magic Wand_.”

“_Ohhh,_” came from Peter and Mike together.

“Look what’s later! I don’t think I saw anything about it in the last edition, and I just noticed this now!”

Peter held the page to steady it. “Open auditions at the Magic Castle? Oh, that’s right here in LA. Above Sunset, right? And, yeah, today, for a couple more hours. Oh, you want to go?”

“_Want_ to? Peter, I _have_ to! It’s my destiny calling!”

Peter resisted the urge to pick up the telephone receiver, say, “Wrong number, Destiny,” and hang up.

“You know what today is!” Micky continued.

“Laundry day. And you wanna duck out,” Mike answered from the kitchen.

“No, it’s… Well, never mind. No, it’s my lucky day is what it is. I just gotta be there!”

“Well, if you want to go, go, man!” Peter flicked through his mail.

“Wait. He…called you in on this, Pete. Mick?” Mike came back from the kitchen, bread in his hand, his eyes narrowed.

“Well, yeah. I kinda thought you might wanna go with me? You’ve been so involved in my training, the sawing in half and the knife throwing and all that—seems you’re really into it, right, Big Pete?”

_You hid the saw, yes?_ Peter’s look queried of Mike.

_And the knives_, Mike’s answering look assured him. Peter had drawn the short straw. Luckily Micky had soon tired of those tricks and focused on sleight of hand.

“I don’t know, Micky. I sort of have plans and—”

“Come on! We had such a good time last time we did something together, didn’t we?” Micky urged, shaking his magazine.

_No._ “I don’t think—” He stopped at Mike’s cough.

_One of us has to go with him,_ Mike’s eyes said.

“Why?” Peter said out loud. _Sorry, I mean, _why_?_

_He’s nervous. Like Davy said. And he really seems to want to be there, at this place._

_Oh._

“You know what, let me just check something.” Peter clapped Micky on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go get your stuff organized, in the meantime?”

Micky scampered off and Peter swung around to Mike. “Fingers?” he asked, at the same time Mike said, “Odd.”

Peter put out his hand, one finger splayed. Mike did the same at the same time, showing four.

“Odd,” Mike repeated, grinning.

“I hope you saw which finger I had sticking out,” Peter said sourly.

“Pete, it’s formal dress there—you’ll need that tux!” Micky called, from inside the No-Room, from where he couldn’t have seen what they were doing, much less that Peter had lost.

“Maybe he’s got some sort of gift for this magic stuff, after all,” Peter muttered.

“Ya think?” Mike scoffed. He regarded Peter. “Hey, Pete, turn around or close your eyes?”

“What? Why?”

“I’m gonna get my special hot sauce out.”

“Okay…”

“From its hiding place,” Mike continued, rubbing his chin. “And I don’t want anyone to see where I keep it. Hey, it’s not like I Bogart it! You know that. Just, it’s strong and in—”

“—the wrong hands, it could be fatal,” Peter finished along with him, knowing the spiel and knowing which hands Mike intended his home-made-back-home pepper sauce should not be in. “Sure. Micky? Stay in there—Mike’s going to get his special chili sauce out—”

“From its latest hiding place, under the sink, next to the whiskey, at the opposite end to the dope?” Micky called.

The clatter was Mike throwing the butter knife into the sink in exasperation.

***

Toby Willis, their summer neighbors' daughter, gave them a ride in her birthday present sports car. “And so if I posed as your assistant, I could write a story about it!” she was saying, once she’d grasped where they were headed and why.

“An article, you mean? Like, an investigative exposé? Or a feature, giving a new perspective?” Peter asked, noting the way her brow creased at his question and his use of journalism terms. For an almost graduating journalism major, Toby didn’t seem to know a lot of the jargon of her profession. Or much about her profession overall.

“Maybe when I get the gig.” Micky pointed at the building, all turrets and towers, columns and roofs, just visible beyond the rise of a huge round patch of landscaped ground inside the drive. “I’ll need a pretty girl in a small bikini then. You’re blonde, so you got a head start. Plus, I’ve seen you in a bikini…” He whistled.

“Is this the drive? This entranceway between these two stone lions?” Peter squinted up it.

“Yeah, turn in here. Cute, huh? _Toby!_”

A car had nearly hit them, the driver honking his horn and yelling.

“Why did you go up the right-hand side of the circular drive?” Peter asked. “Isn’t it more normal to enter left, go around the turning circle and back _down_ this way?”

“That’s clockwise. Magic stuff is anticlockwise. Everyone knows that.” Toby braked sharply in front of the castle, and they exited quickly, grabbing Micky’s stuff before she drove off with it. “The magic word for it is widdershins,” she called, zooming off. “In case they quiz you!”

They stared after her for a minute until a polite fake cough had them spinning around, to see a top-hatted, frock-coated doorman standing there.

“Ah, my good man. We’re here for—”

“The auditions are in the small theater, sirs, and I wish you the best of luck…in finding it.” He held open the door.

“How— Never mind.” Micky shook his head.

He was still shaking it five minutes later when they were still in the Victorian parlor lobby the entrance door gave on to—a Victorian parlor without any other doors. The concierge’s words made sense now. Another guy had come in after them, failed as well, and left. Micky wouldn’t. “There’s nothing up the chimney,” he announced, squeezing himself out of the fireplace.

“There’s not even really a chimney,” Peter pointed out. “At least, there can’t be, if the fireplace is just a small hole in the wall, for effect.”

“And the mechanism isn’t behind any of the paintings or under any ornament.” Micky eyed them sadly, in their new heap on the carpet, where he placed them once he’d removed them from their walls and shelves. “I sure wish someone would appear behind the reception desk.”

He’d been saying that off and on, and swinging around quickly, as though that would make someone embody there behind the dark wood counter, and he had to be quick to catch them. Peter was glad it hadn’t. “Look, let’s just go ask that—”

“No!” Micky stepped in front of him. “No find-ee, no entry. It’s the first rule of the Magic Castle. This place is _strict_, man.”

“Well, how about we leave it for today, ask around on the downlow, and come back for the next auditions?”

“I need to be in here today, Peter!” Micky stamped a foot.

Peter was silent for a minute. “Have you considered priests’ holes?” he asked.

“Jesus, Peter!” Micky took a step away from him. “No, and I don’t wanna! You mean, like, are they different to— No, still don’t wanna! And you know, you got that much time to sit and contemplate, you —”

“I mean, secret passages. In old houses, there were often secret passageways leading from bookcases.” He pointed to the recessed wooden bookshelves, one either side of the ‘fireplace’.

“Oh, of course! Peter, you’re one smart cat! I bet it’s just a matter of pulling a book out…” Micky got to work. “The right book,” he said a minute or so later, adding the tried and failed volumes to his growing pile of furnishings. “Or maybe it’s a matter of pulling two together!”

“Or three.” Peter had an inkling of the way this was going.

Micky, having denuded the first case to no avail, and felt along the now bare shelves for buttons or switches, soon moved to the second. “The clue must be in the book title! So all I gotta do is look for books called things like, I don’t know, _Back Passage_, or _Private Alley _or _Secret Hole_. Peter, what’s… Why are you…” He gave up on the guffawing Peter and bent to search, but found nothing that fitted the criteria.

Peter had been eyeing the bronze owl on the bookcase. There were no other ornaments on these shelves or among the books, so it stood out. He approached it. “Hmm. You wouldn’t think it’d be that hard to find the open sesame.” At his words, the owl’s eyes flashed and the right-hand side of the case pushed itself into the wall, leaving a door-shaped space in its place.

“Peter, look! Guess I found it!” Micky waved a book at him. “Must’ve been when I took out this one.”

It was a hardback, with a picture of a naïve-looking youngster on the cover, and called _What’s Inside of Me?_ “Oh, brother.” Peter hoped…there wasn’t a theme developing to the evening. “We’d better go. The auditions can’t be on much longer.” He picked up Micky’s case, ignoring the fact that this book had been next to _The Golden Ass_.

“Sure. Say, this room is in a mess, huh?”

The hallway they walked into wasn’t. It was richly carpeted in gold and brown, and the walls deep crimson and gold. Chandeliers hung from the ornate ceiling and a bar was tucked away under the stairs, stools in a neat row under the overhang of its counter and no one in sight, like the desk in the lobby. That he and Micky seemed to have the run of the place struck Peter. “I thought the Magic Castle was really strict about outsiders not seeing around the place?” he queried.

“Oh, it is. I guess we’re being watched.”

Micky didn’t look too bothered about it, but Peter keep shooting glimpses from the corners of his eyes at the portraits on the walls, checking if the eyes followed them around…and blinked. There were a couple of life-sized mannequins, one seated at a writing table and one using a wall-mounted wind-up phone, and he wondered if they were actually people, or if the suit of armour on the half-landing of the staircase was…occupied. The castle had that feeling to it. Not malevolent, by any means. Just…watchful.

They walked the length of the hall, but no doors seemed to lead from it, either at the end where the staircase was…or back the way they’d come, when Peter, on a hunch, went to check. He could detect no seam or crack, showing a door was there, and hadn’t it been farther down the hall, meaning the hall…had been longer? That would mean people were messing about with sliding panels, right? “Micky—”

“Must be upstairs.” Micky stroked the carved wooden bannisters and paused at the paintings along the wall and the things displayed in alcoves above them. He stopped completely in front of the more modern-looking framed posters and photos along the corridor above. Even the frames were simpler, not carved and gilt like the floor below. “Look at all these famous magicians that all played here!”

Peter was peering into a room they’d passed. It was a small bar, leather swivel chairs at the counter and small tables and chairs scattered throughout, again opulent and that fascinating historical and mysterious vibe to it. He smelled food cooking down another corridor, or wing, meaning a dining room or rooms. And theaters, too? Plus stuff up in the towers—how big was this place?

_Big_, Micky confirmed, with a handful of magicians performing every night in several spots all around the place. “So if I don’t get a gig in one of the performance auditoriums, I could be performing in a bar or leisure space!”

“If…you audition.” Peter, recognizing stalling when he saw it, tried to nudge him to the end of the corridor and the room there. Seats were visible through the open door and he could hear voices. They’d found the small theater, home of the auditions. “Come on. You’re going to do fine.”

Micky…didn’t. Dropping his props as he laid them out on the table set up on the stage, he looked out of the corners of his eyes to see if anyone had noticed. They had. He stilled, and it took Peter nodding and waving encouragement to get him to move.

“Start again?” called a kindly old man, who seemed to be one of the people in charge.

Micky nodded, took a deep breath, and froze. Simply froze, like he’d been encased in ice, or was a robot whose circuits had seized up. “Micky!” Peter leaped onto the stage and tried to smooth out Micky’s rictus grin of agony. “Let’s just go home, babe.”

“No.” Micky spoke without moving his lips. “I want to be here!”

“Shall we have a minute’s break? Give this youngster a chance to conquer his nerves?” The kind-looking old man stood and put his hands to the small of his back, overriding a younger, more impatient guy at his side. “I need to stretch my legs. Come along, Lewis. Everyone deserves a fair chance. One minute won’t put us behind.”

“Micky, get it together, man!” Peter urged, once the small theater was empty of everyone but them. “Just relax.”

“I’m trying!” Micky gritted out, still stuck in place.

What could he do to help, get Micky loosened up? Peter rummaged in the props and noticed the fake goatee and stuck it on. He clapped on the top hat. “Micky, I’m a magician, look! I’m…the Astonishing Pietro!” He chalked his stage name on the blackboard, then took the oversized deck of cards. “As I shuffle the cards, you’ll notice that my fingers never leave my hands, ladies and gentlemen!”

“Unlike the cards,” Micky commented, as Peter let them flutter to the ground from on high in a slow cascade, trying and failing to catch them, rushing around, his face sorrowful, more so as he fake a slip on one card and a skid on another, tripping over his fallen-off top hat into a prat fall.

“Never mind. For my next trick, I take this dove, this real-live bird…” He continued, babbling about the bag he held and would put the bird into, covering the fact he’d replaced that prop in the case and placed a handful of feathers into the paper bag instead. His out-of-the-side of-his-mouth scream-squawk when he smashed the bag between his hands had Micky chuckling, and his horrified face had him guffawing. When Peter poked a hole in the bag, pulled out a few feathers and started to cry, Micky collapsed into a fit of laughter, sinking to the floor.

“Pete. You’re a crack-up. You slay.”

“I agree!”

Peter and Micky jumped at the voice of the impatient man, standing just inside the door.

“Oh, the naïve dummy routine! We just don’t see that strain of comedy-magic here!” The older man finished applauding and wiped his eyes.

“We don’t, but we should! I loved that sad-sack schtick. Which is why we’d like to offer you a slot, kid.” The younger guy came down to the stage. “What d’you say…Pietro, is, it? Fancy performing your act here tonight as a trial, see how it goes over?”


	6. Winter, 1965 part two

“Oh, I couldn’t. Micky, I wouldn’t ever steal your dream out from under you, man,” Peter assured him, replacing the floating rings in their box for Micky.

“No, no. It’s…fine. It’s the only way, because I have to be here, so… Ooh! I could be your stooge, right! I’m great at being a plant!”

“Really?”

“Sure, Pete! Remember when we got the jobs at the Patriot drive-in, when they showed _Death By Shadows_, and I was a screamer in the audience? ‘It’s _on_ me! The Death Shadow’s _on_ me! _Ahhhhhhhhh!_”’

“You _were_ a good screamer.” Peter had thought Micky’s performance, out in the people watching the movie, better than any of the actors _in_ the B-movie shocker.

“And you were a good fainter. Very artistic. Way you staggered along the row of cars, up and down, side to side, getting everyone looking first before you hit the deck?” Micky kissed his fingers in appreciation.

“Do you think those gimmicks worked, to sell the crappy movie?”

“Nah. Shouldn’t think so. But having the nurses there with stretchers and the ambulance was clever, huh?”

“Mike liked being a nurse more than Davy did,” Peter recalled.

“Well, yeah, he would—they had male scrubs _his_ size.”

They both paused, recalling the sight of Davy in the white uniform…dress.

“That fuss he made about us waxing his legs.” Micky shook his head. “If he’d shaved them himself, we wouldn’t have had to tie him up and get creative like that. He only had himself to blame, really.”

“Yeah and you know, when you’re being carried on a gurney, you wish the bearers weren’t in the middle of an argument?” Peter rubbed the bump that had never gone down on the back of his head.

“How many times they drop you?”

“Every time.” And the argument had continued during the aimless driving around of the ‘ambulance’ before they’d driven back to be in place for the next showing. When they’d had to go and do it all over again. Every day. “Longest two weeks of my life. And I still don’t know how the movie ends!” Peter complained.

“Gentlemen…”

They’d both forgotten the other two guys were still there.

“We don’t use stooges in the audience here, but seeing as yours is a novelty act, an exception could be made for a, well, helper,” the guy continued.

“Yeah, kid. You should stick around. Give you a chance to see real magicians at work. Then you can up your membership from associate to professional,” Lewis added.

“What’s the difference?” Peter asked.

“The first is for people with an interest in magic, and the second for those with more than a superficial knowledge,” Micky muttered. “I’ve been trying to go pro for ten years now.”

Peter winced. “Well, if you’re sure you’re okay with this?”

“Petey, I’m as sure about it as I am that this top card”—Micky fumbled in his sleeve then smacked his hand down on the deck—“is a queen.” He offered the pack to the old guy, who took the top card. looked at it and showed it to Micky. Micky’s face dropped. “Best out of three?” he begged.

“Maybe you should just go and get set up,” whispered the old guy.

“Great! Where are we on?” Micky asked, cheering up. “I know there’s three theater rooms—”

“For the headline magicians,” Lewis said.

“The lounge bar and the pub bar…”

“For other billed magic acts. Newcomers put on their more…informal acts in the ‘impromptu areas’,” the older guy added.

“Draughty,” Micky commented, a little later, when they found the alcove in the corridor, the spot Peter had been assigned, a nook where Magic Castle guests gathered while waiting to get into one of the better venues, ‘newcomers’ meaning acts nobody knew about.

“And you’ll stay here, while I’m…” Peter left it vague.

“Not much choice there.” Micky scowled, indicating his shoes Peter had tied by the laces to the legs of the chair he was sitting on, after making sure there were laced up too tightly to be kicked out of. Peter was good at knots.

“I’m sorry,” Peter told him again. “It’s Mike’s latest security measure for if you have to be left on your own in a public place. You understand.” He gave Micky a quick frisk for scissors, fighting Micky’s wriggles to get Peter’s hands into a good spot and his purrs when he did. “Mick—”

“So I like a little cheap thrill! Sue me! And yeah yeah. Break a wand.” Micky waved at the table, indicating Peter ought to start.

***

“It went okay, right?” Peter asked. He wished he hadn’t finished with the milk in the top hat trick. Oh, it’d worked fine, the black plastic lining of the hat containing and hiding the white liquid, when he’d shown the hat to a few members of his audience, and releasing the milk to fill the hat again when he pressed the switch: for him to pour over himself. A few girls from the audience had rushed over to mop him and his tears up when he’d cried on cue.

Just, no matter how well he’d sponged himself down in the bathroom, he worried he still smelled of milk, and he knew Micky wanted to wander about, take everything in. Like now, him lagging behind Peter. Well, no problem, not with their Monkee version of wrist reins, the silk scarf now tying Peter’s wrist to Micky’s. “Micky?”

“Yes?” replied a female voice from the other end of the scarf.

“_Micky?_” Peter quavered, not daring to peek around.

“Michelle, in full.” The brunette joined him at his side, looking him up and down. “My friends call me Micky. Same name as the guy who asked me to help test his…and your…skills. He was looking to find someone else called Micky. I don’t know why, but…lucky me, right?” She licked her lips.

_The little—_ Peter fought his first instinct, to look for a phone and call Mike, confess he’d lost Micky. Because…he couldn’t, in that ‘Micky’ was still firmly attached to him. And when Peter detached her, as he would, it would be Peter who had let ‘Micky’ free. _Oh, that cunning little…_ It took a while and a whole lot of promises for him to free himself from her. _God._ Seemed Micky, male Micky, had developed a taste for, well, ‘more than two is more than twice the fun’ type adventure, after that folk festival he and Peter had attended. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to maneuver Peter into it.

He ducked into the nearest parlor to hide. No, to compose himself. No, to listen to the piano mus— “_Eeeeek!_” The piano was playing itself!

“Shush!” ordered a woman. “The ghost won’t play requests if people are scared of her!”

“I still don’t see how the Castle’s resident ghost, a woman who died at the turn of the century, can know _Moon River_,” commented the man with her.

“Oh, she probably heard it on the radio. Or maybe she’s got the record,” Peter replied. “It’s a very popular song.”

He stared in fascination at the self-playing piano. He couldn’t see any wires or levers, any explanation as to how the keys and pedals could be working. The woman standing near him moved so he could read the placard, see who the piano had used to belong to, Jean, a daughter of the house who’d loved her pianoforte and her music so much so that even death hadn’t shut the lid on her hobby. The song came to an end and Peter considered.

His father had given him many pieces of advice on a whole range of subjects when Peter was growing up, most of which Peter had forgotten or ignored. His mother, however, had passed on more idiosyncratic pearls of wisdom, most of which he tended to remember. One of them was “If you meet a ghost, be polite to it.” So Peter approached the piano stool and gave a half-bow.

“Ma’am, I’d be honoured if you’d play for me.”

There was a short silence and then the glass on top of the piano waggled a little. The empty glass. The rocks glass. The implication was clear. “Of course.” Peter took it and sniffed. Whiskey. He caught sight of the small bar in the corner, just a wooden counter with a four-bottle holder mounted on the wall behind it, and a tray of glasses on a shelf under that. There was no one there, like the counter in the lobby downstairs. Peter leaned over the counter and the whiskey glass flew from his hand to the upside-down whiskey bottle. Its black optics dispenser was pushed upwards and a generous measure of the amber liquid served into the glass, which was then set on the counter.

“Hmm.” Peter did recall one of his father’s maxims: “Never let a lady drink alone.”

“Better make that two,” he said, and a second tumbler attached itself to the whiskey optic and received a hefty shot. It too was set on the counter.

“Hey!” He clapped his hand over his hip pocket, from where his wallet was being gently lifted. He got a hand to it as it eased free and opened it. A bill flew from it to a box near the selection of glasses. Peter waited a while, but nothing else happened. “Keep the change?” he called, and the box shook, doing a happy little jig in place. Peter returned to the piano and set one glass on the its top. It rose, clinked with his and a good measure of whiskey vanished before the tumbler set itself down again. Peter took a belt of his, to be companionable. The stool tucked itself closer to the piano, and the piano’s middle C note was struck a few times, ringing out an _I haven’t got all day_.

“Oh, right. Well, there’s a song I’ve been toying with and would love to hear played. Funnily enough, _Toy_ is in the title. Well, the current title. Because it’s a raggedy, bobbing-about sort of tune. It’s a shuffle, in G major, and…” The hairs on the back of his neck stood up when the keys depressed for the familiar—to him—notes. Taking off with a stronger through beat from the la-la-la-laaa, la-la-laaa-la, la-l’la intro he’d been tickling away at for a week or so, the trills and rolling chords made it sound complete, full. _Good_, even.

“Thanks! You know, there’s another I’d like help with? It’s in F Major. I think. And just a bunch of triples at the moment…” The intro he’d had in his ears for a year or so now trilled and expanded into a tune, one in which the unexpected drop to a lower chord in the chorus had his eyes opening wide. It sounded good and the simple melody wistful, yearning, wanting to believe… The silence was plaintive after. Peter understood. “That was really something. Thanks. But you want to play something a bit more lively?”

A quick arpeggio sounded and the glass waggled again for a refill. Playing music was thirsty work. Peter obliged, for the both of them, and, back at the piano, a second stool slid itself out. “Duet? Really? Sure!” A few notes of twelve-bar blues sang out and a second later, Peter was playing half of a piano four hands version of _Rock Around the Clock_. As soon as they’d finished, and the audience’s applause died down, an unmistakable bluesy glissando and an arrogant G, A, B, C three octaves below middle C invited him to play a duet of—

“_Great Balls of Fire_? Okay, but move over. I’m playing the left-hand part. The low part.”

Wow. He had a hard time keeping up and was grateful for the song’s rests. The audience filled them, clapping along madly, and singing the lines with loud delight. Peter’s playing was rough and sloppy, but it didn’t matter, not with that electric energy burning right through to the ringing finish.

“_Stand clear!_” Dashing up, Micky flung his jacket over the piano.

“Micky, wh—?”

“Oh, sorry, thought you were gonna set it alight, the way you were going!”

Peter became aware of what he must look like, standing, one foot up on the stool, hunched over the keys like that. His glass was empty and he felt a little woozy. _Huh, from boogie-woogie to boozy-woozy._ But he remembered his manners. “Thank you, Jean. I’ll try that chord progression you suggested.”

He eyed Micky. Normally Micky would have been all over that, making jokes and riffing on Peter’s imaginary chick, but now he looked shifty. A little jumpy, even. Oh, of course. “Yeah, thanks for that stunt you pulled with the Micky mark two. Not. You know you’re supposed to stay with me!” Mike would be mad at the both of them. He’d have to be extra vigilant—

Peter caught sight of the handcuffs sticking out of Micky’s pocket and whipped them free. In a second, during which he fought a stumble as he lunged, he’d snapped one half around Micky’s skinny wrist and closed the other side around his own. “There. That should keep you in place. Hand me the key. And don’t even think about…What.”

“Peter, I don’t got the key.” Micky swallowed.

“Well, I’ll get it from the props bag…” These looked old and…not look like Micky’s usual cuffs and so Peter was half-expecting the—

“There is no key.” Micky held up his wrist, making Peter’s rise too. “These cuffs, Peter? They’re the one pair The Phantom couldn’t get out of!”

“Charles Fantone, The Phantom?” The famous escape artist was one of the four founders of the Magic Castle. “Oh.” Then Peter frowned. “Should you have them, then?” No, Micky probably shouldn’t, any more than he should have half the stuff that found its way to the pad via his habit of helping himself to souvenirs from whatever he happened to be involved in. “Right.” Peter took a breath and tried to feel completely sober. “Let’s just go. Really _sneakily_.”

They were sneaking along all right, and hurrying along, once they opened a door to a room where a séance was being held. _Houdini Séance Chamber_, Peter read, with a shiver. “Isn’t this an upper floor?” he queried of the older, slightly dingier corridor they were creeping down minutes later. “Haven’t we gone around in a circle? In fact, aren’t we going up into one of the towers?”

“Oh, are we?” came Micky’s artless reply.

They were! It was older, colder and felt genuine, not showbizzy. “Micky!”

“Oh, all right! Peter, I’ve always wanted to see this part of the building!”

“The expressly forbidden to enter part.” Of course he would have.

“You know the four magicians who founded this place lived in a tower each? Really good magicians live in three of them now. Like, house magicians.”

“Magicians in residence?” Peter suggested, thinking of universities. “Do they teach courses?”

“Uh-huh.” Micky looked surprised at Peter knowing that.

“Wait.” Peter felt woozy, but could still do basic math. “Four towers…three lived in. So this one, this one whose cordoning-off rope we’re stepping over…”

“Was The Phantom’s!” Micky dragged him down the short corridor. “And this was his suite.” Exclaiming in surprise as the handle depressed, he opened a door to a room, one in which a lamp was burning.

“And people are coming!” Peter jerked his head in the direction of the voices coming up the stairs. Not wanting to get caught wrongdoing, he pushed Micky inside the room and closed the door behind them. With a stifled yip, Micky hurtled forward, dragging Peter with him to shoot under the four-poster-bed, pulling the ruffle down. Just in time: the party behind them reached the door and opened it a crack.

“…today is the anniversary of his death,” announced a voice. “And you know the legend?”

Noises among the other members of the tour party suggested they did.

“That on this day, Charles Fantone, _Le Fantôme_, comes back to perform his tricks once more! The reason the door opens itself, on this one day a year. Now, I know every one of us would love to see his spirit, or even go into his room to try to discover where he hid his things.”

_Oh God._

“But no one ever has,” came the guide’s stentorian whisper

“Because of the curse he laid, right?” asked another voice.

“Which no one would dream of disturbing!” the guide assured them.

Peter tried to hit Micky without moving his arm and giving them away. “…safeguards,” was the last word he heard before the door shut with a click.

“Micky!” He pushed Micky out from under the bed and glared at him. Micky’s insistence on having to be at this place on this day, Micky’s white-hot curiosity…it all made sense now. “You shouldn’t be in here!”

“No one should,” Micky replied. “Because if anyone comes in, legend is—” The door locked itself, with a loud clang. “—that happens. For a start.”

“_Micky._” Peter tried to put threat into his voice.

“It’s your fault! You pulled me in! In fact, you handcuffed me to you and pulled me in. I had no choice!” Micky hissed. He clutched at Peter. “You hear that?”

“That menacing laugh rolling around the room? Would it help if I said no?”

“_Yessss!_”

The lamp went out.

“Micky…I’m going to regret asking this, but…tell me about the curse?” Peter said.

“Oh, it’s nothing much.” Micky attempted a laugh. “Just that anyone comes in here, they don’t see the sunrise.”

“Oh, okay.” Peter shivered. It was growing cold and a fog pressed against the windows. Of course. Trying the door showed it was solidly locked. of course. The two other doors leading from the room were equally as firmly closed. Of course. They tapped the walls and floor, seeking out hidden exits and concealed trapdoors, and found none. Lifting up the room’s sparse furnishings or speaking to them revealed no secret levers.

“Try the windows?” Peter suggested, tired out. “Yes, I know they’ll be shut tight and we can’t open them.”

“How do you know that?” Micky asked in astonishment.

“Just a feeling.” Peter rolled his eyes. “But we can smash one.”

They couldn’t. Everything they tried throwing at the glass bounced off, hitting either him or Micky. The bigger things hurt. “No, we’re not throwing the bed!” Peter grabbed Micky. “How could we throw the damned bed!” He sank to the damned bed, needing a rest, which meant Micky was forced to lie down too, very quiet and still beside him. Peter sighed. “It’s okay. I’m not mad.” Not with his head swimming as the whiskey coursed through his bloodstream. “We’ve been in worse spots.”

Micky squealed like a girl as, with a bone-chilling clanking, grinding noise, the ceiling dropped a foot or so. Peter bit back a scream as, with a blood-freezing screeching, scraping noise, the walls advanced in a little. “It’s okay,” he said again, wrapping an arm around Micky. “We’ll be fine. Think of the other tricky situations we’ve been in.”

“Like the submarine.” Micky nodded. “Oh, and strapped to that rocket.”

Peter looked at him. “What.”

“Oh, right. You weren’t there for those.”

“Okay…well… See?”

“Yeah.” Micky flinched as the ceiling dropped another foot. “Just, none of those were cursed, you know?”

“Yeah.” Peter held him tighter. Was that fog, from outside, seeping in to swirl around the floor? A clock struck midnight.

“Pete, if we die—”

“We’re not—”

“I want you to have my drums.”

“Mick, if we…” He gave in. “Thank you. And I want you to have my b…brothers.”

“Oh. Okay.” Micky fell silent and pressed closer still until he was lying across Peter’s chest, his free arm holding tight. “Petey, I don’t wanna die. Not while I haven’t… I mean, not, not without…”

_Oh, Jesus, no. He— _

“Ever having experienced—”

_Can’t be—_

“A decent blowjob.” Micky propped himself up on Peter’s chest to stare at him with those almond eyes. “They’ve been all real sloppy and/or bitey and generally _poor_.”

“And you’re looking at me because…”

“You must know what you’re doing.”

“How so?”

“You gotta dick, Pete!”

“So have you got a dick, Mick.” Peter liked that rhyme. Micky was a weight on top of him, but warm and alive and not unpleasant, although his proximity and the topic of conversation had Peter shifting a little.

“What, suck my own dick? Pete, don’t you think I haven’t tried? And I’ve given it a lot of thought. And my conclusion is, you know why guys can’t? Because we’d never leave the house again, man! Wouldn’t go to work, the store, the laundromat… I’m trying at that yogi stuff you teach us, but even so…” Micky stopped. “I said too much,” he muttered, in a voice far removed from the impassioned outburst of a second ago.

Before Peter could reply, the walls closed in a little more and the ceiling dropped a little farther. Micky dug tighter into him. “Mick, are you crying?” he asked.

“No. You are.” Micky, head buried in Peter’s chest, dashed an ashamed hand over his eyes. “Look, forget I said that, okay? As if you’d wanna, when for one thing, you’re probably hung up on that chick from Blossom.”

“Which chick?” There were three in the R&B band Peter had once played double bass for.

“I know you reconnected with her when they got us on the bill with them for the Festive LA mini-tour this month. I know you were involved with her before, when you were crashing with her before we got the pad. I’m not a kid, or stupid.”

“Them.” Peter tipped Micky’s chin up, so they could look at each other.

“Huh?”

“Crashing with _them_. Tisha and Leona share a pad.” He waited, but Micky didn’t seem to catch on. Micky wasn’t a kid or stupid, no, but he was a little naïve. “I’m not hung up on either of them, any more than they are on me.”

Micky’s face scrunching up as he tried to follow the thread was endearing. Peter nudged him up a little, to kiss him for comfort, maybe, but it landed on Micky’s lips. It turned out to be a surprisingly good kiss, thorough and long, and Peter found it, plus Micky lying on him like that, as much of a turn-on as Micky evidently did. The talk about blowjobs was probably a factor in it, too, which reminded Peter.

“Hmm. You sure? Sure there won’t be any…crying over spilled milk after?” He rocked his pelvis in a gentle rub onto Micky’s, to make his meaning clear.

“_Peter!_” Micky giggled.

“No, ‘I was saving that for my wedding night’?”

“No…” Micky considered, copying Peter’s move and rubbing back. “I’d probably say ‘There’s plenty more where that came from’. If I had a wedding night. Or any more nights after this.” He bit his lip.

Peter didn’t suppose they were dying any more than he supposed Micky supposed they were. Just, Micky was adept at manipulating situations to his advantage…as Peter was at manipulating people to his. _Must be an eldest in the family thing. Huh._ Still, right here and now, Peter was horny enough from the proximity and his attraction to Micky to want to indulge him and mellow enough from the whiskey not to think of a reason why he shouldn’t.

“So, this is your last request, is it?” Peter started laughing and could hardly speak. “Well, traditionally, the condemned man ate a hearty meal!” he managed to splutter.

“_Peter!_” scolded Micky, giggling again.

Peter flipped them so Micky was underneath him, and he was lying on top of Micky. “I’ve never done this like this before,” he said, feeling a grin curl up one side of his mouth.

“Huh?” burst from Micky

“Handcuffed…to the other person.” Before Micky, eyes wide, could leap on that, Peter held a finger to his lips for silence. “Show you a move?” he offered, knowing how much Micky loved that.

“I knew you knew!” Micky’s handcuffed wrist jerked Peter’s as he fumbled in a pocket for something. His other hand went to his fly and he started to wriggle into a sitting position.

Peter sighed. “Micky. Did you just put your glasses on and are sitting up to get a better look?” He tugged Micky flat again. “And a blowjob doesn’t start there.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No. Giving head starts at the head. The one on your shoulders? A blowjob starts at the lips. Both parties’ lips.” He took Micky’s glasses off and smirked. “Why, Mr. Dolenz, you’re beautiful!” He liked kissing Micky, he remembered, caressing the back of his head and tangling in his curls, and was sorry to stop, but he wasn’t sure of how much of a hair trigger Micky had. He unbuttoned Micky’s shirt and paused for Micky to undo his, then skimmed his tongue over Micky’s nipples. Micky’s shudder became a squirm within seconds, particularly when Peter nipped one, then bit it sharply.

He wondered how Micky would react to Peter unzipping him enough to get his hand inside his pants, and Micky initially froze, then pushed into his palm. He was hard and his cock jumped under Peter’s touch when he mouthed at the bulge inside the cotton briefs before easing the waistband down to free Micky. A strangled, “Hot damn!” came from above him when he took the glistening head of Micky’s cock between his lips and licked slowly over the slit.

That elicited a long, breathy sigh. Better, Peter thought, lapping at the precum. He pulled Micky’s pants and briefs down, feeling the pebble of gooseflesh on Micky’s skin from the chill of the room. “Ready?” he asked.

“_Yeeeaahhhhsss!_” was the noise Micky made trying to vocalize his agreement when Peter took him deep and cupped his balls before waiting for his reply, his question a warning only. Peter pulled up, using his tongue tip to trace the throbbing vein that ran from the base of Micky’s cock to just under the head, gently squeezing Micky’s balls as he did so. Precum spurted, coating Peter’s tongue, and he looked up to hold eye contact with Micky as he swallowed, then sucked harder, sliding his lips up and down the now even harder cock.

“_Peeterrrrr._” Micky’s sigh was a groan. “This is the luxury class of head. The Christmas of bjs. The Easterrrrrrrow!” He glared at Peter, who’d nipped him.

“Hush, Micky, or I’ll have to kiss you.”

“Kiss me? What’s so bad about that?”

“Think about—” _Where my mouth’s just been._ “That I can’t do this if I do.” This was him sucking on the exposed, pulsing head, rubbing the flat of his tongue against the bundle of nerves, then swirling his tongue around and down the shaft to take Micky deep again, loving Micky’s low moans of pleasure and the rhythmic thrusts of his hips as he pushed into Peter’s mouth. When he returned to the tip, Micky tried to wriggle free. It took him hitting Peter on the head with the chain of the cuffs for Peter to understand what he was trying to signal. And Peter shook his head.

“_Peter…_” Micky gasped in disbelief, Christmas, Easter and birthday all at once. “Do you…_swallow_?”

Peter’s answer was to pull his mouth free, leaving his lips around the head of Micky’s cock, then only the tip of his tongue in the slit, his eyes on Micky’s and his saliva mixing with Micky’s leaking spunk. He knew how filthy it must look and Micky’s long moan underscored it. Feeling naughty, and curious to see Micky’s reaction, Peter ran a finger over Micky’s perineum, then lingered at his hole.

The effect was instantaneous. Micky bucked and almost screamed. “Peter, I’m— _Ohhh…_” He grabbed onto Peter’s hair, tugging hard, his hips thrashing wildly. _Not quite yet,_ Peter decided, and pulled back again, to hold the tip of Micky’s dick between his lips for a few heart-stopping seconds before plunging down in a fast, deliberate stroke all the way to Micky’s balls. With his free hand he caressed Micky’s chest, felt the mad pounding of his heart under his palm. With an almost shriek, Micky arched high off the bed as his orgasm hit, shooting what felt like a river of hot cum down Peter’s mouth and throat.

Peter held him in his mouth through it, only pulling free when Micky’s cock softened. Only then did he release him, sliding upward to lie on his side next to him, waggling his jaw to ease it. Micky wasn’t that big, in either length or girth, but it’d been a while for Peter. Micky lay flat, his chest heaving, his eyes shut tight. Peter, a little concerned, waited until Micky’s breathing levelled out then stroked his face. At the feel of Peter’s hand on his cheek, Micky opened his eyes, and Peter brushed Micky’s sweaty curls from his forehead for him.

“Jeez, Pete!” he wheezed. “Your head blew my mind!”

“You mean my blowjob blew more than one head.” It made no sense but he understood Micky’s need to joke around at that moment. Micky nodded, still relatively motionless and slow. Then a gleam came into his eyes.

“I wanna try it now.”

“But you said the yoga wasn’t making you supple enough to— Oh.” Yeah, Peter was still hard and aching now, ready to go. “Fine by me.” He lay flat, resting one bent arm under his head. His other arm and hand were yanked around: Micky still not making allowances for being fastened to him.

“Start at the top,” he heard Micky mutter, just before Micky’s hands explored Peter’s chest for a few seconds before dipping lower. Figured. He was always so curious to get to the…erect, throbbing cock. Only he wasn’t, was hesitating. Okay, so the nude magazines Micky favored weren’t of the naked-men variety, but he must have seen another guy’s hard dick at some point? Perhaps not at such close range though. His fingers brushed over Peter’s erection and hesitated, so Peter took his hand and helped him trace over then cup the hard length.

“Feels good,” he murmured, arching a little to remind Micky to undo his pants. “Feels even better now.” Micky’s touch on Peter’s dick was hesitant, but arousing.

“It…seems bigger than before?”

“I don’t exactly …_ah_… go measuring it.” Peter sighed at the touch of Micky’s lips on him, then shivered as Micky wrapped his tongue around the crown. Peer whispered encouragement and appreciation and let out a moan when Micky took him fully into his mouth. He moved slowly, hesitantly, but Peter made no attempt to hurry him. Micky wanted to learn, had to do so at his own pace. He was—_oh, God!_—good with his tongue though, and Peter felt every millimeter of his licks up the shaft to lap at the sensitive nerves behind the head. In the hyper-aroused state Peter was in, that was enough to bring him to the brink too quickly.

He thrust, his hips rocking, and Micky engulfed his cock in one long swallow, taking most of it deep into his mouth, scraping his teeth gently and sending Peter over the edge. “Micky!” he managed, half-warning, mostly in pleasure. But Micky sucked hard, sending Peter into a quick and dirty orgasm. He came, shuddering into Micky’s hot, tight mouth. He wanted to thrust, ride the wave to small spasms that would drain him completely, but Micky pulled off, his expression agonized. He looked wildly around then lurched over the edge of the bed, hauling Peter with him by the handcuffed wrist.

Almost tumbling from the mattress, Micky wrenched something from under the bed. _A…chamber pot_, Peter’s mind supplied, as Micky made use of the receptacle. At least he didn’t retch. Just spat. Then came back onto the bed, to lie down, when Peter did. He surprised Peter by getting a hand to him again, forcing out the last few tremors of his climax, milking out the last vestiges of his cum. It left Peter dazed.

“Sorry,” Micky muttered, shamefaced. He licked the hand he’d just used on Peter, as if that made up.

“’S’okay.” Peter’s chest still heaved a little as he got an arm around Micky. “Course it is.” He nudged at Micky until Micky looked at him, then smiled to see Peter’s satisfied expression. He used both hands to massage his jaw, moving it from side to side experimentally, making it click. When he was finished, he heaved himself up, to brush Peter’s lips with his, then surprised Peter again by probing with his tongue. Peter sucked on it, sharing their flavors in the kiss.

“Wait. _Okay?_” Micky sounded miffed.

“_Good_,” Peter assured him, his lips still against Micky’s.

“Hmm.” He didn’t sound convinced. “Well, next, I wanna have a go at that croissant nerd thing.”

“Croi— _Soixante-neuf_?” The ceiling dropping to about a foot above them cut Peter off. It made the room warmer, at least. Peter felt his eyes closing.

“Yeah, wanna try ’n’ swallow…” Micky muttered, his voice slowing to sleep.

***

The noise at the door woke them. Not just the lock being opened, but then the ceiling raising itself and the walls righting themselves, as if they were somehow connected to the door. Whatever, the noise served as a warning to Peter and Micky, who straightened themselves up, and were zipped and tucked in before the door opened fully. It opened to show two figures, the tallest of whom Peter would’ve recognized anywhere, even with him—

“Mike?”

“You’re dressed as a butler?” Peter added to Micky’s question.

“We’re saved!” Micky tried to bounce from the bed, his leap hampered by him being cuffed to Peter.

“How…” Peter indicated the door.

“The lock was stiff. Needed greasing.” Mike held up a small tin of garage grease with a rubber nozzle attached.

“And the…” Micky indicated the ceiling and walls.

“I don’t know exactly what you mean, but that was more than a simple door lock. It had a trigger mechanism, connected to more moving parts—guess that’s how this room has such a scary rep, huh?”

“How did you know where to find us?” Micky demanded.

“We read the article in your magic magazine, worked out why you were so all-fired-up to be here on that day.” Mike didn’t look amused.

“Yeah, so we guessed you’d need rescuing,” added Davy.

“Davy?” Peter hadn’t been sure it was him. “Why are you…dressed as a maid?”

“_French_ maid,” came two replies, one in a Manchester accent and one a Texan drawl, both loud. The topic had evidently been a topic of discussion between the pair but Peter couldn’t tell if the adjective added to the job made it better or worse.

Davy approached, raising a warning finger at Micky. “Don’t you say a dicky bird. Not one effing word.”

“You look nice,” Peter told Davy. “You’ve got the legs for it.”

Davy was now breathing heavily, right in their faces where they still sat on the edge of the bed. His hair had been curled rather well and his false eyelashes set in nicely. His black kohl and peach lipstick were fashionable. “Exactly _why_ was this outfit in the closet, Micky?” he asked, his tone set to _danger_.

“What? In case we need it, man!”

“Not all you need. Hold your hands out and keep still…” Mike tugged a portable propane torch from his bag, played the flame over the metal links of the cuffs and within a minute Peter and Micky were free. “Take care of the bracelets later,” Mike said.

“Free at last!” Micky celebrated with a mad caper around the room.

“Okay, shotgun?” Mike asked.

“Uh-huh.” Peter stuck out his hand to be helped up. Mike’s hand was warm and strong and fitted well in his. Peter closed his fingers around it.

“Scared?” Mike quirked a lip. “No…” he answered himself, wafting the smell of booze away. “_Drunk?_”

“Bit hungover,” Peter admitted, stumbling to his feet.

“He was half-wasted, man! Peter got drunk with a ghost!” Micky informed them.

“A lady ghost. And now I have to get to a keyboard,” Peter explained.

“Mick, don’t change the damn subject. We’re gonna have a meeting later today about your behavior,” Mike promised him with a scowl.

“Gee, am I grounded, Dad?” Micky snarked.

“I wish…” Peter didn’t know how to finish that. _That you wouldn’t force us into the parental role_, to Micky. _That we didn’t play the parental role_, to the rest. But…mainly to Mike. Because, pondering their roles, Peter wondered if Mike didn’t spend too much time in the paternal one, just as Micky found life easier in the child one. Hmm. A lot to unpack, there. A lot to help Mike come to understand. But for now, he was just glad to see him.

“You look nice,” he said, indicating the formal clothes. He squeezed Mike’s hand, that he still held, and smiled. “I’m glad you came to the rescue.”

“Thanks.” Mike shrugged. “I’m glad…you’re okay.” He smiled too, relief and, Peter thought, something _more_, lighting up his whole face, especially when Mike squeezed back, curling his whole hand around Peter’s, and pulled him close, until they were nose to nose, eye to eye.

_We fit, somehow_, Peter understood, sensing it wouldn’t be long before Mike realized it too. Especially…with Peter around to push things along.

“Shotgun?” Mike queried, seeming to catch something of Peter’s thoughts.

_Oh, yes. Note to self: remember that thought-transference thing_. Peter nodded. It might make things…quicker. Would definitely make them more fun.


	7. Spring, 1966 part one

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to 70mtt for her great ideas!

Peter saw Davy right away on the beach, despite the starting-to-set sun, and Peter being halfway down the sundeck steps made it easy for him to get Davy’s attention with a wave. He pointed over to the flat rocks. Davy shook his head and pointed down at his towel.

“_Over there,_” Peter mouthed, and pointed again.

Davy shook his head again and added an eyebrow waggle for good measure. Peter raised his hands in a _huh?_ gesture. Davy must have hurt his neck, the savage jerk to his left he gave with it in reply. Peter, who’d understood perfectly, shrugged, making Davy perform more contortions to indicate the towel full of chicks to his left to explain why he didn’t want to give up his spot _right there_. Peter mimed searching the beach for whatever Davy could mean, his hand shading his eyes. Davy’s next gesture was him holding his hands out, palms up, making squeezing motions with his fingers and a lecherous pout with his lips.

“_You want to_ _get_ i_ce cream? You need a doctor?_” Peter fake-guessed, making Davy shake a fist at him in irritation. Peter then had to try not to laugh at Davy flapping his elbows and pecking with his head, the universal sign for—

“_Birds?_” Peter mouthed, debating with himself whether to point at the sky and the gulls flying in v formation overhead. No, Davy wouldn’t buy that. Now he was nodding exaggeratedly, which must have looked strange to anyone seeing him seemingly holding a conversation in mime with himself.

Sniggering, Peter lifted up the bag and strode for his original destination anyway. He preferred to spread food out on the rocks rather than on the sand, so saw no reason to change his plans. He watched from the corners of his eyes, seeing Davy stand, then understand Peter wasn’t making for him.

Refusing to look stupid, Davy turned his movement into a stretch, showing off as much of his body as he could. And there was a lot of it on display—those red trunks _were_ a size too small. Micky was right. Did any of them believe Davy, that he still couldn’t understand US sizes properly and had gotten confused in the store? Gotten_ confined_, Micky had fake-coughed and fake-cupped. Peter kept walking and Davy huffed at him, then turned for the water, pointing sand-ward at his towel and clothes, then at the rocks, his implication clear. _You want me there, you take my things there_. He made sure the girls were watching, then turned a few somersaults in his jog to the water’s edge, where he dived in, making sure the round cheeks of his red-cloth-covered ass bounced high.

Not swerving an inch, Peter left Davy’s stuff where it was. He wasn’t Mike, picking up after the younger ones. Davy could look after himself, as could Micky. Peter sat on his favorite flat rock, the second largest, glad he had a sweatshirt on. May still wasn’t that warm, and didn’t bring out a great number of girls, meaning slim last pickings for Davy, who liked to swoop down on the stragglers at this hour. Hence his tenacity, Peter supposed.

Hmm. Swimming… Did Peter want a swim? He thought he did, just not right then. Oh, not because Davy was there and it would cramp his style with the last-chance-of-the-day chicks. Athletically inclined, Davy was always happy to race and do acrobatics in the water no matter what.

Just, Peter had skipped lunch and needed to eat soon. And if that meant he had to wait until dusk or beyond to swim, no problem. Davy swam later too, often, although they tended to go in separately then, it fulfilling needs other than being a shared leisure activity. Peter felt the food containers—still hot. For now. But even hungry, he waited for Davy. Didn’t have to hang on for long.

“Hey.” Davy dumped his belongings down, unperturbed at having had to backtrack to pick them up, then head to the picnic spot. He didn’t hold grudges over things like that. More to do with matters of money and finance, Peter had discovered. Davy gave a final rub to his hair with the towel and held it out to Peter for him to stand in front of the rocks with, to stretch out as a screen. Davy vanished behind it.

“Oi, you ogling my bum?” came from behind Peter.

“Wasn’t, no. Oh, did you want me to? What, you want me to check on that mole for you?” Peter offered.

“What? Oh. What’s it look like?”

“Real peachy_._” Peter smirked.

“Cheeky.” Now in dry shorts, Davy snatched the screen from Peter’s hands.

“That too.”

“Ha bloody ha.” Davy tugged his T-shirt over his head, emerging grinning. “Yeah, good one. Especially as I don’t have a mole. There.”

He would know, Peter reasoned. Probably checked himself from all angles, if more for esthetic reasons than health ones. Davy vaulted up onto the makeshift all-in-one table and bench and Peter flapped the plastic cloth down in the middle of the space. He set out the picnic plates and containers and Davy eyed them.

“You managed to sneak a lot out.”

“Sneak nothing. _I_ cooked dinner and this is our share.”

“You cooked…” Davy assessed, Peter’s tone and expression, and the way he glanced up at the pad. “You know he’s only doing this because Deandra wouldn’t go on a date with Micky alone, Mick being…beyond the pale, like.”

“Wouldn’t or couldn’t?” Peter asked, popping the top off the beaker of soup and feeling in the bag for a spoon.

“Good question.” Davy was more interested in the fat tub of pasta with sauce. “Well, _she’s_ not prejudiced. Obviously.” He pointed at the pad with his fork where Deandra was, with Micky. “Or her cousin, I’d guess.” Who was there with Mike. “It’s her parents who’re funny about her dating…our sort. I said why tell them, but seems they always find out.”

“She’s got brothers?” Peter guessed.

“Yeah.” Davy speared a bit of pasta and rolled it in the sauce before tugging it free. He laughed. “Some date. All they can afford is a home-cooked meal and watch telly.”

“_Color_ telly,” Peter corrected. But yeah.

“Look, movement!” Davy nudged him.

“Micky…showing her the sundeck. Or the view.” Peter laid the binoculars down again.

“Mike must be inside with her cousin, showing her his…instrument. It’s bigger than most people’s. His guitar, I mean, it being a twelve-string. Get your mind out of the gutter!” Davy signalled to Peter to swap, to trade the soup container for the pasta. “Funny, when you think southerners are supposed to be all about observing the color bar.”

Peter shrugged. “Michael grew up in a black area.” He wriggled into a half-lotus, having to grab for the bread roll he almost let fall as he did so.

“Soup’s not bad.” High praise from Davy. “What is it, nettles or dandelions or something?”

“Or something.” Peter refused to be drawn. “Just don’t ask what the black bits are and we’ll all be happy.”

“Ignorance being bliss? Explains why you three are always so chirpy, then.”

“Bad-oum-tish!” Peter mimed a drum roll.

“And, you know, thinking about it, it’s better they eat here, anyway.” Davy pointed at the pad with his spoon this time. “Less chance of people staring, nudging each other, whispering, making derogatory remarks. You know…about Micky’s table manners!”

“_Oohhh._” But Peter grinned at the Davy zinger.

“And you’re to blame. You started this.”

“What? How so?”

“Being with Leona. And Tisha and Beckie.” Davy mumbled the last bit.

“That’s not true. I’ve never been with Beckie.” Peter flashed him a peace sign.

“Knew it!”

Peter narrowed his eyes at him. “Has this been a topic of conversation.”

“Nah.” Davy helped himself to the soda from the bag. “Just gossip.”

“Huh. Surprised you and Micky didn’t have… You did. You had a bet on which one of Blossom I—”

“One_s_,” Davy swallowed his mouthful to correct, looking smug at being the winner.

“And how did that… What, you think Micky’s _copying_ me? That’s a little harsh.” _Even for you._

“Oh, I dunno. But I do know Mike’s just going along with this double date for Micky’s sake. And what I suspect is…in getting him hung up on you, you got hung up.”

“And how about you…shut up?”

“Sorry, mate.” Davy rubbed Peter’s arm and ran his hand down it—to snaffle the remains of the bread roll from his hand. “But you know I wouldn’t say anything.”

“I know. And it’s not like it’s…” Unable to find the words, Peter gave up. _Going to come to anything. Realistic. Possible._ But here, now, he was out on the beach, in the sunset, with Davy, and that was where he was at. He had his mouth organ, so they filled in some time with Davy practicing his pitch, hitting and holding notes in the high tenor range, and then went in the water, sprinting and racing along the sand after to warm up.

“How much longer?” griped Davy. They were almost back at the pad, but there was no sign of the agreed-upon _all-clear,_ _you can come in now_ signal. He shivered. “We should go to Toby’s. She’s probably not in, but I know where she keeps the key and I know the code to the alarm.”

“We all know those things.” They needed to, with Toby’s memory.

“She’s got a nice big color telly with a clicker. You don’t have to get up to change the channel or turn up the sound. It’s like the future, man!” Davy rhapsodized. “If she’s out and comes back, we’ll just tell her she asked us over to watch the Dean Martin show and forgot.”

“It still seems weird saying Toby’s and not the Willises',” Peter said. “And wow, nice graduation present, her parents deciding they don’t really want this beach house any longer so she might as well have it to live and work in central LA, huh?”

“Not half.” Davy peered into the distance, as if he could see the big house. He frowned. “Especially seeing as she didn’t _actually_ graduate. Oh, some technicality she’s trying to sort out. You know what she’s like.”

Peter sort of did. The blonde journalism major was a little vague and he could easily see her failing to meet some USC academic requirement or other. “She’s short on credits?”

“Nah. She’s loaded, mate. And I don’t mean she’s drunk!” Davy winked. He clutched Peter at the noise from the door above them. “Damn. Quick!” he whispered, pulling Peter to squeeze into the small space under the sundeck. There was hardly any room left behind the rocks set under the deck and its stairs, and the pair squashed close. Davy sniggered. “If you get a stiffy now, I’ll—”

“Be caught between a rock and a hard place?”

Their giggling had them putting a hand over each other’s mouths. They had to be quiet and well, not there. They’d promised not to crowd Micky, muscle in on his evening. Well, been made to promise. But he was coming their way! Davy shrugged, hearing Micky’s voice too. Two pairs of footsteps descended the wooden steps. Yeah, he would be bringing a guest down that flight—it was the one that had all its rungs.

“Yes, it is a lovely stretch of beach.”

Deandra. They could see her feet now, and Micky’s.

“Yeah, it’s real pretty in the evening like this. And it’s nice first thing in the morning too.”

Davy closed his eyes.

“Oh, I didn’t mean that you should stay over and see it then! I wasn’t saying I wanted you to sleep here with me! Wait—not that I don’t. I’m not saying that. That you’re…That I’m… I mean it’s your decision. No, that’s wrong. Oh, I’m not saying it’s _my_ decision. Wait. I mean…”

Peter closed his eyes.

Davy held in a snort. “When’s he seen the beach in the mornings?” he whispered.

True. Micky stumbled to the waves for his early morning surfing—if he made it—his eyes still closed.

“And seems you’ve been teaching him some chat-up lines!” Davy continued.

Peter made a face at him. His dumb blond act was just that, an act—one that worked fine. Oh, they’d missed a bit:

“So this audition’s very important to me. I can’t mess up this big chance. It means all my time and energy and focus is on this for the near future. You understand.”

Davy winced.

“As in, I can’t afford any distractions. Won’t have any free time…”

Peter winced. They both listened to the footsteps going back up the stairs.

“Well.” Davy pursed his lips. “At least it’s a better excuse than she’s relaxing her hair, right? But you know, I was sure a nice meal in the pad would do it. Which proves…”

Peter waited for the zinger:

“…they should’ve gotten in outside caterers!”

They waited until a chair was placed on the sundeck, the all-clear sign, and waited a few minutes after that, so it didn’t seem too obvious. “Hey,” Peter called to Micky, where he was putting the bandstand back to normal, his movements half-hearted. “How’d it go?”

“Oh, okay.” Micky hefted the huge painted vase with its pretty flower arrangement. “Better put this back outside the Kleins’ before they notice it’s gone. Oh, hey, what were those black bits?”

“I told you don’t ask!” came in a Texan accent from the kitchen.

Peter opened the door for Micky then joined Mike at the sink. “So, okay?” He pondered the meaning of Mike’s answering shrug. “Is…Deandra’s cousin a dancer too?”

Mike held his gaze for a long, hard second before replying flatly, “No.”

“Oh, too bad.”

“Pete, this wasn’t exactly a date date. More like chaperone duty. On her part too.”

“Oh, more a _duenna_ than a _bellibone_.” Peter hated that he felt impelled to show off his ‘big words’ around Mike.

“Yeah. Huh.” Mike wiped his swoop of hair from his eye, using a wrist, his hands being sudsy. “Now I know how Mrs. Arcadian felt.”

“Well, it was nice of you. Stopped Micky going through with that crazy plan,” Peter pointed out, raking the errant bangs away for Mike.

“Thanks. What, being on a date _and_ his own chaperone? Yeah. And you hid—”

“The dress and wig? Yeah.” Peter picked up the cloth and dried as Mike washed, liking how they worked together. He didn’t think that would be the end of the matter and sure enough, Mike came back to it later.

“Hey, Peter.”

His low voice stopped Peter at the door to his bedroom, after his shower. Turning, Peter dabbed at his top half with his second towel, and Mike followed his movements, from the ruffling of his chest hair to the bunching of his biceps. “You want…something?”

“Huh?” Mike’s throat sounded dry. “Oh. Uh-huh. Micky’s a little bummed out over this. He had his hopes ridin’ on tonight. We should, oh I don’t know, make an effort to get his mind off it? Cheer him up?”

Peter felt that usual mixture of warmth at Mike looking out for them and the prickle of irritation that came with it. “Sure, Mike. We can keep an eye on him tomorrow. Oh, you want the towel? I took the last one.”

“Erm, yeah?”

Peter let his hands stray to his waist and the tuck of the towel there before tightening it and passing Mike the smaller one he’d been using on his hair. He smirked as he walked in the open door of his room.

“Tart,” commented Davy.

“Told you before, it’s pronounced ‘Tork’.” Peter shook his head. “Limey.”

***

Peter was on phone-answering duty the next day and regretted it. “Yes, I heard you couldn’t graduate,” he replied to Toby. “It’s too bad. Help you? How?” Listening made him none the wiser. “Mike?” He beckoned him over. “Toby needs backup.” He listened a little more. “Us to go there?”

“Her university?” Mike asked.

“USC,” Peter confirmed. “She’s calling from there.”

“Why?” Micky joined in from languishing on the couch. “Oh, like, Mike persuade them for her?” He cracked his knuckles.

Peter beckoned them all close enough to listen. “Retrace my steps for me,” Toby said.

“Retake your classes for you?” Micky asked, looking nervous.

“I don’t think that’s what she means. Toby, where exactly are you?” Peter tried. “Uh-huh, I see… Okay… We’ll try, okay?” He put the phone down. “As I understand it, she has outstanding fines.”

“Outstanding as in outta sight?”

“Probably.” Peter grinned at Micky, pleased he was showing an interest in something after moping about all morning. “On library books. Unreturned ones. And her father won’t pay, just insisted she return the books. So she was, this morning.”

“And…” Mike was shrugging into his jacket.

“And she lost them on the way.” Peter scooped up the car keys. “She told me all the places she went to on the way so… Micky, come on! This should take at least three people. Pity Davy’s out.” He basked in Mike’s approval.

“Did she go to any ritzy places?” Micky asked as they drove to Toby’s, their plan being to start from there. “Because we could say, get the same corner table to eat the same brunch, ask for same assistant to buy the same goods, or…see what looks like a box of books in her driveway.”

“That’s not the end!” Peter said, as, box placed in the back, Micky went to walk off, adventure over. “Come on, see the campus. The architecture is—”

“Outta sight,” Mike threw in. “We could maybe put up some posters, hand out some flyers…Get you a soda when we’re there?”

Micky sighed out of the window on the way but perked up on the red brick and white stone University Park campus, especially at the number of girls sitting around the small garden squares. “Romantic, you say?” he asked, craning his neck as they walked from the car to the library. “Oh yeah.”

“Roman_esque_,” Peter corrected. “Revival. Short columns and pointed towers.”

“Yeah, she has,” Micky agreed, almost walking backward, his eyes still on the chicks. “You know, forget the acrobatic type, the noisy ones, like dancers, say. I like the quiet bookish ones.”

_But do they like him?_ Mike’s raised eyebrow asked Peter.

Peter amended his mental _guess we’ll see_ to _I hope so_.

“Guys, over here!” Toby yelled from the desk to one side of the rotunda, spotting them when they walked into the library. She ignored the hiss of shushes this received. “They won’t let me return these!” These being a pile of lurid bodice-ripper-type paperbacks. Peter looked from them to the box of hardcover academic books he now carried. This was going to be complicated. He barely registered Micky’s excited yelp about “Sophisticated-lady types!” and it was a few minutes before he and Mike realized Micky was no longer with them.

“Pete—”

“On it,” he assured Mike, turning detective. Most of this floor was big library rooms, all long tables with individual students working quietly. Spying a corridor full of smaller, shared tables and hearing chatter from the groups at them, Peter headed that way. Yep, one had a trio of chicks, all with that puffed-up and pulled-back hairstyle…and Micky, sitting the wrong way round on a chair pushed into their midst.

“Well, yes, I’m a TA,” the one with the most cat-like glasses informed him, icily, answering some question Peter hadn’t caught.

“And you could teach me a thing or two any day!” Micky told her. “But not in the evenings. I’m off then. It’s when I play with my group, see?” He unfurled a poster. “We’re real good and you’re all wel—”

“That’s the name of your group?” queried a blonder girl, one with her suit jacket hanging from her shoulders. “It’s spelled wrongly.”

“No, it’s not really.” Micky smiled. “See, my name’s Micky, with no e. And there’s also Davy, with no e. Because the es in our names were used to write the Monkees.”

“Oh I see!” The first girl got to her feet. “So when you said you hoped I could teach you a thing or two, you meant remedial writing!”

“As in, basic literacy skills,” added the second, standing in turn.

“My advice? Start with simple rhymes.” The third stood and gathered her things too. “Like, No way, José.”

“It’s Micky!” he called after the departing trio. “With no e,” came in a mutter.

_Oohh._ Peter winced for him, and winced even harder when they got back to the pad and Davy was being dropped off by his date, and making a production of it.

“Hey, fellas,” he said, waving off the small, brightly hued van that was now proclaiming to the street from the loudspeaker on its roof that _my boy lollipop, he makes my heart go giddy up_. Davy smirked.

Micky pointed after it. “But…but that’s the Candy Wagon, from Candy Kisses in the Santa Monica Mall!”

“Yeah. And that was Candy.” Davy pulled his collar away from his neck. “And these are Candy’s kisses.” He clapped Micky on the shoulder. “Look, I know you—”

“Have a huge crush on her and was gonna ask her out! Soon! Well, eventually!” Micky shouted. “You mean you and her—”

“Yeah. Twice, actually. What can I say?”

Mike’s, “_Nothing_, man!” overlapped with Peter's, “We’re fine knowing nothing more, thanks.”

Davy shrugged, then patted his rustling pockets. “Oh, she gave me some freebies for you all.”

“Well, that’s kind,” Peter observed, omitting the words _payment_ and _in_ before _kind_ and making sure his voice didn’t have a questioning tone. He flinched as the van came past again, this time blasting out _I feel nice, like sugar and spice, so nice, so nice_. Davy blew a kiss at it.

“At least say it wasn’t in the Candy Wagon!” Micky demanded. “I mean, kids race along behind it!”

Micky would know. He did too. “I like that service she has in the store, matching customers to candy,” Peter opined.

“Oh…talking of…” Davy handed him a paper bag.

Peter opened it. “Flying saucers?”

“She thinks you’re a bit of a space case, yeah.”

“Uh-huh, _real_ kind. Real ‘sweets for my sweet, sugar for my honey’ of her,” Mike commented. He took the small package Davy held out to him. “Lemme guess…”

“Sour apple drops, yep. Because she thinks you’re crabby. What? Oh, come on! Take a joke!” Davy looked from one to the other.

“And me?” Mick’s voice was small and Peter couldn’t look when Davy handed him a big striped candy in the shape of a pacifier.

“Funny, in England that’s called a dummy,” Davy said, throwing a big piece of hard candy into his own mouth.

“I fucken hope that’s a jaw breaker,” griped Mike.

“Funny, in England that’s called a gobstopper,” Peter threw in.

“Should be a Ho Ho. Without the second Ho.” Micky stormed off indoors.

“Pete—”

“I know. Keep an eye on him.” Peter dropped a flying saucer into Mike’s bag and took a piece of Mike’s sour candy for himself.

“I didn’t like the look on his face.” Mike stared after Micky.

“I never like the look on his face,” Davy quipped.

“Oh, you’re on fire, Tiny,” said Mike, making Davy scowl. “Careful no one throws a bucket of water over you, makes you melt, huh?”

“Wait. I’m on Micky-sitting duty because you have to go soon, right? You’re being collected?” Peter thought to check.

“We do, and we are, yep.” Mike’s glare at Davy suggested Davy wouldn’t find the rest of the day and night, spent in Mike’s company, very congenial and that Mike would certainly not be discovering if Davy’s kiss was sweeter than an apple pie. Peter laughed, remembering more of the _Lollipop_ song lyrics: “And when he does his shaky rockin’ dance, Man, I haven’t got a chance.” Very apt, for Davy.

He would have sung them to Micky, to cheer him up, but discovered Micky, who’d been brooding in his room all afternoon, must have slipped out while Peter was practicing his meditation on the sundeck. Which…was fine, wasn’t it? There was no indication on the chart of Micky having arranged to be anywhere, but that didn’t mean anything. He could have popped out to a neighbor’s. That the phone book was in his room didn’t mean anything. He’d probably been looking up funny names again.

Peter sniggered, remembered Micky’s joy at discovering a Richard Everhard. “You know the nickname for guys called Richard!” he’d chortled. It had made Peter’s contribution of a guy he’d known called Robin Banks seems like small beer, especially when Mike had claimed he’d been at school with a Dusty Rhodes and Davy swear that in his class at school, Neil Downe had sat next to Ben Dover.

Yet something about the quality of the silence made Peter uneasy, and he jumped when the phone rang. “I’ll get it. My turn,” he called out of habit. “Oh hi!” he said to Micky’s eldest sister. “Mick’s not here.”

“I know,” she answered, sounding like she was gritting her teeth. “And I know where he’s gone.”

“Out for ice cream? Nothing. Just wishful thinking. Carry on?” Peter listened to Coco say they were lucky: when the place had called his parents, she’d happened to answer and taken the call into the hall cupboard for privacy.

“So Mom doesn’t know anything,” she hissed. “And you gotta go and get him before she does. Before there's trouble. Well, more trouble.” She rattled off the address.

“Me?”

“I can’t go! Even if I could sneak out now, me go _there_?” Coco gasped.

“Where?” Peter asked.

“It’s— No, Mom! She called me remember, and I’m through now anyway. She didn’t know the assignment, but she does now and she’s gonna GO AND DO IT!” The line went dead.

_Damn._ Peter wriggled his feet into his shoes and went to grab the car keys, only to discover Micky had taken them. Resigned, he went through everyone’s pants and jacket pockets for cab fare to whatever this place was.


	8. Spring, 1966 part two

A, a tattoo parlor! Peter thought wildly as the cab approached Santa Monica Boulevard. He’s getting a tattoo, wants to make over his image after the last couple of days! Week. Weeks. Thinks he’ll look more dangerous. Chicks like danger and bad boys and— But the cab continued, leaving behind the area Peter associated with painted-black stores that had large pictures of skulls and crossbones and oversized roses hanging in the windows, and very loud music blasting from their speakers.

A strip club! came his next thought when they neared Sunset. And not like _All Girls, All Day_ off Crescent, what Mike called a titty joint and Davy a peeler parlour (with a u) and which to Peter was a topless cabaret, where they’d hung out in the early days for the free rehearsal space and the cheap all-you-can-eat brunch buffet—no pun intended. They’d gotten on first name terms with some of the girls, who’d come to their early gigs and spread…the word. No, Micky needed to drown his sorrows—among other things—and had gone to a real clip joint, a grindhouse…except the cab had crossed Sunset and was still going up North Gower Street. Peter frowned, wondering why that street name seemed familiar.

But what could be up here, beyond Hollywood Boulevard and over the Freeway? There were no bars or clubs here, just cul-de-sacs, with secluded houses, set back from the street in their own gardens. They looked private and— A brothel! A bordello! A cathouse. A house of ill repute. A den of iniquity. Oh God, Micky! They’d called his parents because he’d gone to—

“_A monastery?_” Peter yelled in the face of the tonsure-headed, brown-robed figure who’d answered the old-fashioned bell pull of the white Spanish mission house. He hadn’t noticed any sign on the gate or in the grounds they’d come through, and when the cab driver had crossed himself, Peter had assumed that was because of the…nature of the establishment they were making for. “_A monastery?_” he shouted again before he had control of his voice.

The monk, evidently on night-porter duty and sleepy looking, as if he’d been napping on the wooden stool just inside the door and been woken by the bell, pressed his finger to his lips, his eyebrows drawn together.

“Oh, this is a silent order?” Peter guessed. “Well, then, I must be in the wrong place. I’m looking for a friend. _My_ friend, I mean, not a random guy who wants to befriend me? Oh, my _brother_, I meant to say.” He tried to remember what Coco had gabbled, something about having promised to send Micky’s brother in answer to the call. The phone call. Peter hoped Micky hadn’t heard any other call. And it wasn’t a lie—Peter felt all men were brothers and especially the members of the Monkees.

“His name’s Micky. He would have arrived a little earlier?” Damn. He should have checked the cars in the courtyard back there for the Monkeemobile. “He’s about my height? A tiny bit taller but not as much as he claims? Got brown eyes? Huh, he says they’re hazel but I don’t think…” He trailed off as the monk, his eyebrows pinched into a frown now, pressed his finger harder against his lips. Peter pressed his own finger to his own mouth, nodding in promise.

The man indicated Peter should go down the steps and into the drive, then joined him, and beckoned Peter to follow him, walking along the front of the building and through an archway cut into a hedge, to pass into another courtyard. It looked very dark and private.

“Wait. This isn’t a catering-to-very-specific-tastes brothel, right?” Peter thought he’d better check. “I’m not judging. I believe in loving the person not the gender, and in free love. And that’s just it. I’m against paying for it. Not because I’m broke, although I am. I just don’t agree with—”

The monk leaned close, close enough for Peter to see the bald patch on his pate gleaming under the light of a lamp swinging in a tree, and to feel the man’s breath on his face. “Jesus Christ, _shut the fuck_ _up, kid!_” he growled, his accent Bronx. He clapped his hand over his mouth, looking horrified.

“_Sorry!_” Peter whispered. “It’s okay, I won’t say anything. About that, as well as in general.”

His guide straightened up again, and indicated Peter should precede him to the row of simple terraced chalets or huts, out of the end one of which music was coming and inside which someone was singing along. Not just someone! Peter would have known that voice anywhere. The small knot of robed figures gathered outside, all with their fingers on their lips, and all looking frazzled, turned to Peter and his guide. Peter understood.

“I’ll sort it out,” he promised the crowd. Reaching the door, he turned. “Namaste,” he intoned, and bowed with his hands together. When he straightened, his guide was giving him the bird. Charming. Well, Micky could make a saint weep, so the monk or friar—Peter didn’t know if this order went out into society rather than stayed cloistered, but thought better of asking—was probably justified. He pushed open the door.

“_Peter?_” cried Micky, his long brown habit sweeping the floor as he turned.

“_Micky!_” Peter shouted back, adding a loud “Sorry!” over his shoulder. He shut the door and turned the radio off. “Why… What…” Giving up on questions, he grabbed Micky’s head and bent it to see the top. No tonsure. “_Why?_” he asked, waving around the room to make his meaning clear.

“Why not?” Micky threw himself on the bed, then winced—it had no mattress. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“_What?_” Peter tried.

“Become a monk, man!”

“_What?_” Peter eyed the cell-like room then Micky. “Don’t you think it’s a bit…”

“It’s my fate. My future. I’m embracing it now.”

Peter sat, gingerly, on the blanket-covered plank of wood. “What makes you—”

“You’re kidding, right? The way I strike out with chicks, I might as well get a jump on this.”

“I see.” Peter stretched to take a leaflet from the wooden table near the bed. It was called _So You Want To Become a Monk, Do You?_ He read: _Step One: visit the monastery. Step Two: stay for a retreat to take part in the daily routine of the monastery, learn what’s expected of a monk and pray on whether monastic life is your calling._ He skimmed the rest of the information, then closed his eyes.

Micky took up his guitar and strummed loudly, singing an even louder accompaniment.

“Micky, this is a silent order.” Peter held out his hand for the instrument and, shrugging, Micky handed it over.

“Well, the others seem real friendly, Peter. Been tapping on my door ever since I came in here. I haven’t felt like socializing, but good to know they’re around and happy to chat, you know?”

“Micky, didn’t you catch what I just said, about the silent order? They were asking you to be quiet.”

“Oh. Oh! Well, you three can drop in for chats on visiting day! I dunno when that is. Probably says in one of these pamphlets.”

“No, Micky, in eremitic orders, monks don’t interact with each other or the public, and spend most of each day in their cells.”

“Well, I don’t mind some alone time.” Micky winked.

“And they take a vow of celibacy.”

“Huh. Not a problem. It’s like I already have anyway.” Micky’s tone was as bitter as gall.

“Erm, self-celibacy?” Peter indicated Micky’s magazines, a profane addition to the holy literature on the table. Typical Micky, he’d brought his Ted and his favorite skin mags with him.

“You mean, no whacking off?”

“No jacking off either.” He watched Micky trying to work out if there was a difference. “Come home, babe.”

“Why? You don’t want me, either. This just now? That’s the most you’ve touched me since the Castle, Pete! Which was when this started. The curse.”

“The curse?” Peter replaced the leaflet. “That if you spend the night in that room, you don’t see the dawn? Of course we didn’t, with that fake fog that some kind of mechanism released!”

“Not that! Peter, I’ve been _untouchable_ since then.” Micky’s tone was hushed, as if in a confession.

Peter tried to think. Had he? He shifted on the planks. “You mean Deandra and the library chicks? Oh, and Candy? And that girl last week at the—”

“All right, all right.” Micky scowled. “It’s my own fault,” he continued. “I brought it down on myself by forcing you into touching me. Into being intimate with me. No—” His upraised hand cut off Peter’s attempt to interrupt. “I manipulated you into it, pretended to be scared, that I thought I was dying, and you gave in when you didn’t want to fool around with me. And now you don’t want to fool around with me. And now I’m paying the price of nobody wanting to fool around with me. Ever again.”

“Micky, that’s _stupid_! I like dicking around with you!” Peter protested.

“So why haven’t you!” Micky cried.

“I was ashamed, okay! Of taking advantage of you! I should have had more self-control, but I was drunk and horny and I pushed things a bit too far and…” He suddenly thought of what Davy had said, about Micky copying him. He had done, that night, and Peter…thought he’d realized that, in the back of his mind, where he’d kept it penned, not to face it. “I’m a bad influence. Crap role model and _whuuuppperg_!”

That was the noise that emerged when Micky grabbed him and kissed him, all thrusting tongue and pent-up desire.

“So.” Released, Peter wiped his mouth. It had been a little sloppy. He had to smile at the huge grin on Micky’s face. “Let’s go home, yeah? I’ll run you a bubble bath and bring you a big glass of wine and a slice of cake when you’re in it.”

“Huh?”

“It’s what my dad does for my mom when she’s had a hard day.” Peter stood and gathered Micky’s things.

“And what does your mom do for your dad?”

That Micky was passing him a copy of _Lui, le magazine de l'homme moderne_ as he spoke about Peter’s parents in that way, Peter tried not to think about. He busied his mind in instead wondering what made this edition one of Micky’s favorites, especially as, as far as Peter knew, Micky didn’t read French and didn’t play much tennis. Well, Peter supposed, neither did the girl on the cover—despite her racquet—and especially not wearing _that_. “Oh, I don’t know,” he eventually had to answer. “But it involves his study, with the door locked and opera playing. Oh and whiskey. Talking of, we need wine and cake.”

“There’s a ton in the gift ship.” Micky hefted his bag. “And it’s open. Come on. What? They owe me. I gave them a ton of moolah when I came.”

“Where’d you get a ton of cash?” Suspicion set in.

“It was—”

“In the kitty!” Peter yelped. “I saw it was empty!”

“I left an IOU,” Micky muttered.

“Let’s…worry about that tomorrow and just get gone,” Peter decided.

“Hey, Pete.”

Peter stopped.

“Thanks.” Micky hugged him, tightly, and Peter felt Micky’s interest…rise. Was this good idea? Probably…not. Stepping away, he pulled the brown habit off Micky, relieved to see his usual crazy cartoon tee and frayed shorts beneath, because he’d been wondering, if, like Scotsmen, monks… Peter shut his mind down.

***

Back home, Peter waited until Micky was well settled in the rarely used bath with a bottle of wine and half the honey cake before he used the phone. Damn, that wasn’t Micky’s sister answering. “Hi, is Coco there, please?” he asked in a high-pitched girlish voice, thinking quickly.

“At this hour? She’s in bed! Wait…is that _Peter_?” asked Micky’s mom.

“_Yes,_” Peter replied, still in the same strangulated voice, not having a Plan B. “_Hello._”

“It’s _very_ late, Peter,” she said, her voice calm and quiet.

“Oh I know. I can see the clock.” Peter hated himself. “Just, if you could please see if she’s awake and tell her everything’s fine, nothing to be concerned over? She…was worried about my laryngitis,” he improvised, still in the squeak. He closed his eyes in mortification. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

“At a reasonable hour, Peter,” said Micky’s mom, firmly. “If you’re not sure if it is or not, ask one of the others if they’d make a call at that time, okay? And get well soon.”

“Yes. Thank you, Micky’s mom. Bye now,” Peter said, still in the same strangled voice. He let his head _thunk_ on the table.

“Hey, Pete?”

He sat up. “Yes?”

Micky, standing there in a towel, frowned. “What’s wrong with your voice?”

“Nothing.” Peter coughed to get his baritone back. “Nothing. What?”

“You know what _my_ dad did for _my_ mom?”

“I’m…scared to ask.”

“_Massage._ Like you just started learning.”

Peter raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Hey, I’m still upset and confused!” Micky protested. “I need comfort!”

“Mick, are you manipulating me?”

“Yes,” Micky said, after a pause. “But can I have a massage anyway?”

Peter grinned. “Go lie down, trouble.”

“Lie? Isn’t it _lay_?”

“No. Lay takes an object.”

“A lay takes an object? Well, _I''m _taking _this_ one, baby!” Micky produced the plastic bottle of baby oil from behind his back.

“Just get up the stairs.” Peter could hardly speak for laughing. He chugged down the rest of the wine—he’d probably need it—and shoved the remains of the cake into the ice box, then amended Micky’s _sorry I took all the cash_ IOU, adding _but there’s honey cake_ to it, disguising his handwriting to avoid any come-back.

Peter got to the upstairs bedroom to find it lit by one lamp and Micky, still towel-wrapped, reclining against his headboard and placing a paper bag from the candy store on his bedside table. Davy’s paper bag, Peter saw, by the hard candy Micky was throwing into his mouth. _Gobstopper._ Peter found the word amusing.

“They start blue,” Micky observed, sucking. “And it’s turned your fave now.”

“Orange?”

Micky stuck out his tongue with the candy on it.

“So it is. May I?” Peter didn’t wait for Micky to answer, instead easing the candy from Micky’s tongue into his own mouth, slowly, letting Micky suck with him as he transferred it. Hopefully Micky would have more positive associations with the store’s products, if not the owner, now.

“I’m sorry about Deandra,” he told Micky. “I know you like her. But Candy…you weren’t so hot for her, right? Yeah, you were hacked, torn-up by what Davy did. And he acted like a jerk. But you know that if you were really vibing on a chick, he’d respect the no poaching rules.”

“Yeah. After we taught him, huh?” Micky gave a half-smile.

“Right. He hates being dangled out of the upstairs window by his ankles,” Peter agreed. “It messes his hair up.” He moved the candy from the inside of his cheek now he’d finished talking.

“What color is it now?” Micky inquired.

“Yellow. It’s always yellow after orange. Banana.”

Micky’s face twisted in a grin. “You like sucking on a banana, huh?”

Peter sat closer. “Here. This next flavor’s for you.” He looped a hand around Micky’s nape to draw him in to transfer the jaw breaker to him again, pushing it under Mick’s tongue with his.

“Cherry?” Micky arched an eyebrow.

“Indeed.” And that was how Peter intended he’d stay, as far as Peter was concerned. “Now lie down and shut up.”

With a muttered, “Love your boudoir talk,” Micky lay on his front, his towel loose over his ass. Peter shucked his shirt and, remembering the class at the skills workshop, placed a small pillow under Micky’s ankles, to support his lower back. Warming some of the oil in his hands, he instructed Micky to take a long, deep breath, then warned him he was about to start.

Micky had soft skin and the oil spread quickly across it under Peter’s long strokes. Micky moaned when Peter started at the bottom of his back and moved upward along the middle to first one shoulder then the other, increasing the pressure a little more after each minute. And when Peter started using his thumbs on the back of Micky’s neck with each pass, Micky purred.

“Los Angeles leopard,” Peter muttered.

“Uhhhh?” came in a blissed-out sigh from below him.

“Untouchable, are you?” Peter scoffed, shaking his head.

Micky turned his head to look at him. “Maybe I meant unfuckable.”

Peter refused to be drawn. “Neither of us are in that space, Mick. And don’t start on that word choice, hmm?” What was next…oh yes, short, circular strokes with slightly deeper pressure, to contrast with the longer sweeps with their lighter pressure. Kneading with the palms and thumbs. Micky wriggled under him. “What?”

“Too much like medical,” Micky slurred.

“Oh, okay. Well, let’s try this.” He grinned: his quick, repetitive percussive taps up and down Micky’s spine made him think of Micky playing the drums, only Peter was a lot more gentle, his hands cupped and using only his fingertips.

“Neuughh,” came from below him, and Peter understood it to be negative. “First one.”

“Some guinea pig you are,” groused Peter.

“Eeeek eeeek,” came from Micky.

So Peter went back to the long, smooth sweeps, continuing them up Micky’s neck into his hair, where he rubbed with his thumbs and scratched with his nails. He checked on the noise underneath him: Micky was drooling. Peter tried not to snigger at the thought that this would make a different wet spot on the bed for a change. Micky was very still and Peter bent low to him. “You asleep?”

“Hardly.” Micky half-rolled over, still under Peter. “With this?” This being his boner. “Maybe with a _good-night_ kiss?”

Peer got the joke, that Micky didn’t mean an innocent bedtime kiss, not with the way he pulled him in tight and Frenched him, the angle unusual and almost difficult, making them both work for it, for a good night.

“Even less likely to get to sleep, now,” he commented, rolling onto his back, making Peter shift out of the way of his hard-on. “Pete…I know I’m not your happy ever after, but how about if we have a happy ending? Both of us?”

“You are incorrigible!”

“Well, yeah! That’s what _Dolenc_ means in Slovene. Duh.” Micky twitched the towel free, raising his eyebrows in invitation. “It’s not like you weren’t planning on it, anyway.”

“What makes you say that?” Peter tossed the towel to the foot of the bed.

“You took your pants off.” Micky smirked.

“Oh. I…guess I did.” Peter grinned. He wasn’t wearing underwear, either. “Come here.” He lay behind Micky, pressing close and trapping his hard-on against Micky. He stretched an arm over him to take his erect cock. He’d liked the feel of Micky’s cock before, and now with the slight film of oil on Peter’s hand, stroking him was different. Easier. Longer. Peter exposing more of the head with each stroke and Micky pushing up into then thrusting into Peter’s hand. Peter loved the almost lilt to Micky’s moan.

He realized he was rubbing his erection on Micky’s ass, almost in his cleft, and pulled back a little.

“No.”

The almost growl stopped Peter in his tracks. “What?”

“You too. Not just— I’m sick of it being just me. It’s lonely. Not fair.”

“Sure,” Peter murmured, thinking there was more to that than it sounded, but not able to go into it, not right then and there. “_Sure…_” That one came on more of a gasp as he pressed and moved just right, pleasuring himself on Micky’s body, reveling in how lithe and willing it was at his side. Within seconds, his hips took on the rhythm of Micky’s, where he fucked Peter’s fist then lengthened his movements so he rubbed back against Peter’s dick and balls at the same time.

“’S’good, the slide.”

“Ummmm.” Peter knew what he meant. The slipperiness and scent of the oil added extra sensation. He tightened his grip, remembering how hard Micky had squeezed him before. That sparked another memory, his guess about Micky’s hot spots, and he nuzzled into Micky’s neck, then bit. Not hard, but a definite more-than-nibble, even more-than-nip, and Micky tensed.

Understanding, Peter sped his hand, and the noise of slapping skin added another sensory layer to their coupling. Micky didn’t need to warn Peter—his seizing muscles and rumbling groan announced his approaching climax, making Peter almost have to fight to keep his grip when Micky trembled then shook in his hand. Micky rocking hard onto Peter’s cock, still cradled between their bodies, ripped Peter’s orgasm from him too, and he came when Micky did, Micky shooting over Peter’s hand and Peter pulsing onto Micky’s ass and hip. He had to whip his face from Micky’s neck to breathe—and moan out his satisfaction. The unexpected fast pace and tough pressure felt good.

“So good,” Micky panted, squirming onto his back and curling his hand around Peter’s to pump out the last gasps of his climax. “Love coming _hard_.” He didn’t seem to mind Peter rubbing out his last tremors and ripples on Micky’s hip. “Was…okay?”

Peter opened an eye. “Can’t you see?” he answered, his tone plaintive. “Very okay. More than.” He grinned, mainly to make Micky do so. He waited until Micky let him go before he moved, stretching and feeling around for the towel to dab at them. “Sorry about the…” He pointed his nose at Micky’s neck.

“Oh!” Micky clapped a hand over it. “I didn’t…notice, kinda.”

He’d have to cover up any hickey…or ring of teeth marks. Peter hoped it wasn’t anything too noticeable. “Okay?” he murmured, sensing a…something Micky wanted to say or— “_You_ okay?” It hadn’t—

“Yeahhh.”

Peter distrusted that extra length to the word. Micky looked fine, more than, his skin rosy with a sex flush and his eyes…gleaming. Oh no. He’d gotten his breath back and was—something. Peter took a breath, steadying his own breathing and inhaling their mixed scents. Sitting against the foot of the bed, he resigned himself. “Tell me?”

“Well…” Micky pushed himself up into a sitting position. “We skipped a bit. Or backtracked a bit.”

“We did?” Peter finished cleaning his hands. God, that towel was covered in— “What did we skip?”

“We moved on or maybe moved back and we didn’t sixty-nine. Do sixty-nine. Croiss—_soixante-neuf_.”

Peter eyed him, specifically one part of him, then one part of himself. Parts that were used. Not ready to go.

“No, I was reading about it. It said it was best for debutants to start with it detumesced! Debutants is beginners and detumesced is—”

“I know what the words means. They’re French…” Peter looked around. Micky’s overnight duffel lay in the middle of the floor, where he, or anyone, could trip over it in the dark. “Have you been reading about this in _Lui_?”

“_Oui_,” Micky replied.

“But you don’t read French. And we don’t have a French dictionary.”

“They do in the library.”

“The local one? The Beechwood library?”

“The _bibliothèque_ _de_ Beechwood, _oui_.” Micky looked smug.

Oh God. The thought of Micky sitting there, his porn mag open on the table, translating…_filth_… Peter made a mental note to avoid the foreign language shelves in the local library for the foreseeable, and the library itself for a while. And actually, Micky didn’t just look smug. Sitting there like that, rumple-haired and almond-eyed, red-lipped and half-wrecked, he looked…_fucking hot_. Peter felt his dick trying to perk up, especially when Micky slipped his hand down and toyed with his. “And _I’m_ the tart?” Peter muttered. “Well, after all that study, I guess you want to move on to the practical, huh?”

“Your father’s a professor, right?”

“Yessss…” Micky’s question startled Peter. “But I’m guessing his subject matter and methods are very different to this. I fucken hope so, anyway.”

“No, I meant…” He shut up when Peter pulled him to lie flat again. He looked puzzled when Peter didn’t climb on top of him, but lay on one side, diagonally from corner to corner of the bed, his head to its foot, but within seconds was mirroring Peter’s sideways position, the other way around. Easier for him, Peter thought, despite wincing at the contact Micky’s sharp elbows and knees made with his softer bits when Micky copied Peter in looping his arms around Peter’s hips, and tried to copy Peter’s bent-leg position, to use his lower thigh as a head rest.

“Jeez, Micky! Already?” Peter found him hard again. Although he wasn’t far behind, when Micky gave a bashful little giggle that blew gentle air all around Peter’s crotch. Micky was eager, gripping Peter at the base of his hardening shaft and running his tongue up and down it before taking the head into his mouth. They’d both just come, so the pace was leisurely to start with, both of them licking and lapping, Peter enjoying the feel of Micky filling out in his mouth, until Micky’s precum slicked his cock, making Peter swallow and start to suck.

Micky matched him stroke for stroke, his pressure a little harder, making Peter throb in his mouth. His hands maintained their grip on Peter’s hips, so Peter didn’t venture beyond stroking and squeezing Micky’s ass cheeks—until he dipped his fingers into the cleft. Just a gentle straying of his fingers, but it had Micky gasping around Peter’s cock and sucking harder. Heat gathered at the base of Peter’s spine and his balls tightened. He shifted a hand to squeeze Micky’s balls, hastening the pace, and at the same time pulled him deeper into his mouth.

Micky groaned around Peter’s cock, telling Peter he was close. Peter wanted them to come together and when Micky’s body stiffened against him, he let go, climaxing in a heated rush, pinned in place by the death grip Micky had on his hips. Peter had already come once, so this release was smaller, as was Micky’s, which Peter swallowed easily, pulling his mouth free to do so. He waited to see what Micky did, tracking it by the sounds and movements he heard and felt, and wasn’t too surprised when Micky rolled over to the edge of the bed to grope around for something under it. Spluttering noises told Peter he’d found some receptacle—or a choice of them, with his slobby ways—to spit into.

“Hey.” Peter’s call got Micky straightening, finally, from remaining hunched-over and still. “Before you ask, _no_, we are not doing this again in five minutes so you can have another go at being able to swallow, man! Have some respect for my advanced years, huh?” He pulled Micky down to lie. “And don’t even think about saying sorry. That was good.”

“Heh,” came from Micky. “Don’t think I’ve got it in me anyway.”

Peter could tell Micky was tired, the way he let that opportunity for a cheap joke go. Well, at least Micky’s ‘curse’ was broken. And Peter had a feeling Deandra hadn’t been making excuses not to see Micky again, that she’d be in his life, and soon. He should tell M—

“Oooh!” His exclamation startled Peter. “Dirty talk! Something I wanna…” He was asleep.

Peter covered him up and, tired himself, debated the risk of meeting with Micky’s bony elbows and knees as he sprawled in his sleep in a single bed versus walking downstairs to his own.

“Sleep there,” Micky said, still asleep.

_There_ being the other bed, Peter guessed. The vacant bed, empty as its owner was away overnight. _Michael._ Okay… He slipped free of Micky’s bed, cursing as he tripped over Micky’s abandoned bag, and into Mike’s. It felt…right somehow, in a way that the fooling around he and Micky indulged in didn’t, really, not ultimately, and was something Peter didn’t think they could do for much longer. _Not when…_His thoughts slowed and he couldn’t reason or rationalize, not stretched out in Mike’s bed, his hand curling under Mike’s pillow and Mike’s scent stroking his senses.

“I know,” came indistinctly from the other bed, Micky talking in his sleep, and…understanding, somehow.

“Thanks,” Peter whispered, to the unconscious Micky, smiling as the barely there citrus tease of Mike’s cologne lulled him to sleep, too, to dream of its wearer.


	9. Early July, 1966

Peter stared after the Buick Riviera speeding away from their party. Judy’s brother drove the vehicle faster that Peter would have, this time of night in the residential street of North Beechwood. Seemed he couldn’t wait to get away—he hadn’t even stuck his head out the window to say hi, let alone come into the pad for a drink.

Nice of her brother to give her a ride home, though, especially as he didn’t look happy to do so, from the short, blurred glimpse Peter had gotten of his face. But why wasn’t Judy driving herself? Had she been expecting she’d be drinking a lot? Had she had her licence taken away? Peter didn’t think she had an alcohol problem, exactly, but as they’d interacted more and more during the evening, he’d sensed something dark in her. No, eating away at her, if he were being fanciful and—

“Ain’t that your dame?”

Peter turned to see the speaker, a guy blonder-haired and darker-brown-eyed than him, leaving the pad. “She’s not mine,” he corrected, before the party-goer, a fellow musician, could continue with the “Ain’t that a shame” part of the couplet, to see a gal supposedly stepping out or walking out on a guy. “She doesn’t belong to me, _Jeremiah_,” he added, with silky deliberation.

“_J_,” the lead singer of the Foreign Agents corrected with a mock-scowl, then lit the cigarette dangling from his lips and laughed. He shook the pack, shaking one partway out of the opening, in an offering he held out to Peter.

Peter rarely smoked…tobacco, but felt the need right then. Sherlock Holmes had his pipe and— “Thanks. Non-filtered?” he observed, flicking his bangs back before he bent his head to accept the light.

“Yeah. What’s the point of paying for a cigarette you can’t smoke all of?”

True enough, Peter supposed. Filling a section of a cigarette with filter must be cheaper for the manufacturers than filling it with tobacco.

“Just make sure you keep the brand name mouthside. Cops so stupid, they see you with a cigarette with no filter, assume you’re smoking pot.” J gave a shake of his head, making the smoke he blew out shiver. He looked from Peter to the empty street. “Rich chick? She got herself a personal chauffeur or something?”

“No. Her brother…” Peter didn’t want to say _came to get her_, or _collected her_—it made Judy sound like a little kid instead of the grown-up professional career woman she was. “Actually, I don’t know why she didn’t ask him to the party.”

“What, and cramp her style?” J scoffed. “She was expecting to be spending time with you! I saw the way she looked at you. Nonstop, too.”

He liked knowing information, Peter remembered. Gossip, too, probably. “You think?”

“Yeah. You and only you.” J paused at the blare of laughter and commiseration from the pad. Some drinking game. “I came near her, just to get a bowl of chips from behind her, and she froze me with her glare, man! Like I was gonna grope her. And I wouldn’t,” he added.

“Huh. Well feel free, man. Not to grope, obviously, but…” J’s widened eyes and raised eyebrows said he wanted more of the story. “I told her I couldn’t offer her more than friendship.” Peter frowned, recalling the look on Judy’s face when they’d talked. He still couldn’t quite decipher it. “I hope I didn’t hurt her.”

“What, knocking her back? Oh, I’m sure she took _that_ well, Pete—what d’you think? _Duh._ Oh, and the guy code of honor isn’t the reason I wouldn’t touch.”

Peter was suddenly aware of how close they were standing, leaning against the garage wall. He sat, patting the ground next to him. J remained on his feet.

“You guys played tight,” he commented, tilting his head back toward the house. “Been gettin’ in a lot of practice. And gettin’ some righteous gigs. Well done.”

“Thanks, man. And thanks for the support.” The Foreign Agents had come en masse to see them at the Trip, off the Strip. And, okay, maybe to promote themselves to the manager, following Mike’s example of talking up the Monkees, which was getting them work and getting them noticed.

“And ya got some great material.” J gave a slow series of nods. “Mike’s work?”

“Mostly.”

“Yeah. And Mike sounds better ‘n’ better, these days.”

“Yes.” Peter let the jolt of pride thrill through him. “He’s really expanding his range. Vocal and guitar. Oh yeah, last year’s party, you guys played too! We should’ve done that this year. I don’t know why we didn’t.” Other local groups had, too. He tried to remember—

“When we’re all such deadly rivals now? You goin’ for the house band spot at the Duke Box, right?”

“Yes. Think so.” Mike wanted them to, anyway, which meant they would be. Peter supposed it was a good idea. Sunset Strip was where it was at, where the happening was.

“Guess I’ll see you then, at the auditions. Hey, tell Mike good night for me?”

“Sure.”

J ground out his cigarette and saluted Peter, before getting on his bike and driving off. He was into bikes. Like Mike. Needing a respite from the noise and press of the party, Peter walked the long way around to get to the side of the house, still preoccupied with Judy and now J’s intonation, when he’d said— He stopped, seeing Davy sitting at the outdoors table at the side of the pad, a girl on his knee.

“Oh-oh. Busted.” Davy held up the cigarette he was smoking and peered at Peter.

“Uh-huh.” Peter brought his out from where he was holding it hidden behind his back, to stub it out in Davy’s ashtray, Davy doing the same with his. He wasn’t sure why they tended to conceal their smoking from one another, but they often did.

Davy was still squinting at him. “Tess, you wanted to learn quarters, didn’t you? Go on in and get us all a place on a team. We’ll be in in two minutes.” He helped her to her feet and got in a quick stroke of her ass as he did so. “Stress smoking…”

Peter wasn’t sure which of them the musing was aimed at, but guessed him when Davy pointed at the folding chair opposite, for Peter to take a seat.

“Judy gone?” Davy started by asking. Peter nodded. “What was all that feeding you pastries lark?” He imitated how Judy had held out one of the small desserts she’d brought, getting Peter to try it, then snorted. “Reminded me of a kid feeding a sugar lump to a pony!”

“It was about as sweet.” Peter hadn’t liked it.

“Profiteroles? I know you don’t call ’em that here, but no bloke can say _cream puffs_, much less _I want a cream puff_, or _oh what a lovely cream puff_ with a straight face, so we use the French, in England.”

“That would be _chou à la crème_.”

“It would, would it? So, like baking, does she?”

Peter had no idea, and his face said as much.

“Yeah, well, call it what you like, but that’s not normal gear to bring to a spread. Choux pastry, also known as show-off pastry, that’s what my sisters’d make for impressing a bloke—and that’d be way along the line, at some candlelit dinner for two. Not right off, at a neighborhood do!”

“I guess?” Peter sneaked the bottle of beer from between Davy’s fingers and took a sip.

“But…” Davy dropped his voice and leaned in, as if about to share something deep, making Peter lean in too. “Judging from the uniform shape and size of those choux pastries, the even way the chocolate was drizzled on ’em? They were professional. Not homemade.” He sat back, his final wisdom imparted, an eyebrow raised for Peter’s contribution.

“But they weren’t in a paper box from a patisserie or restaurant. She brought them in a plastic container, as if she’d made them.”

Davy’s folded-armed, pursed-lipped nod said, _exactly_.

Peter took a healthy swallow of the beer, finishing most of what was left. Okay, so maybe Judy _had_ wanted to impress him. Then he recalled her sour face when the Monkees had been playing, or when he’d been jamming on the banjo with his folk-music friends. Perhaps she _had_ come because she wanted to spend time with him? “But she knew we were the hosts at the party? It certainly wasn’t any kind of date. Well. Anyway…”

“What.” Davy’s tone said he was steeling himself.

“I told her I can’t be more than friends.”

Davy considered, finishing the beer to help him do so. “And talking of more than friends, any advance on That?”

Peter heard the capital letter and understood Davy’s oblique reference. They never discussed it outside of their room, in dark-of-night heart-to-hearts, so Davy must be a little loose, to bring it up here and now. Even so, he was discreet, something Peter appreciated.

“With all this?” Davy prodded, jerking a thumb in the direction of the pad.

“No.” Peter didn’t issue the negative lightly. He thought back over the last couple of days of party preparations, of the event itself. “I sometimes think things are…advancing, to use your word, but then nothing.”

“Could be That Person’s not ready for a relationship. And not, well…”

“Say it.”

“A queer one. Gay. Whatever. We call it different things where I’m from and you don’t wanna know half of them. But I’m not prejudiced. You know that.”

Peter nodded, trying to resist picking at the label on the beer bottle. He didn’t want to broadcast out loud what _that_ was supposed to reveal about a person.

“I think it’s groovy, meself.” Davy pushed the bottle an inch or two beyond Peter’s reach. “I’d like to see you together. It makes sense.”

“Why do I feel I’m waiting for—”

“It’d be handy and cheap.”

“There it is.” But Peter grinned, more so when Davy enumerated the benefits: no having to travel to meet up, no having to spend cash wooing, put That Person in a better mood…

“And me,” Peter chimed in.

“You’re _always_ in a good mood,” Davy claimed.

“Not…always.”

Silence hung over them for a minute, while the worst of the night was kept at bay by the silly homemade lantern they’d hung off the water pipe.

“Umm.”

Peter couldn’t work out if that was Davy agreeing with the last statement or considering more aspects of the situation.

“You tried the tight-fitting clothes, the low necklines, the short hemlines, the accidental flashing while getting changed…” Davy ticked them off on his fingers, starting with his thumb, not his index finger. The first time Peter had seen him do that, he’d been pushed back into his childhood in a European country that used the thumb as the first unit of dactylonomy. “Especially the last one—I’ve seen more of your arse than me own, lately.”

“Sorry.”

“No need. Work those assets while you still got ’em, mate,” came Davy’s sage advice. “You’re good-looking and well-built. Just saying. Oh, and you’ve been trying the subtle touching, yeah?”

“Yeah. And made a fool of myself. Yesterday, when we were making the granola, he nudged me with his foot, to get my attention, and without thinking, I, well, rubbed him back.”

“No! What part of him?” Davy sat forward again.

“His foot. With my foot.”

“Oh.” Davy lifted one shoulder in a dismissive not-even-a shrug. “Well, you could try faking an illness?”

“What, like I’m dying, and get a last wish? Or I’m unconscious and need a kiss to revive me?”

“No, you ’nana!” Davy laughed. “Just, like, lying in bed all pale and weak? So That Person comes in to see you and sort of stays, hopefully on the bed with you? He likes looking after people.”

True, but… Peter shook his head. “No. That’s not honest.” Although his nudging and prodding and flaunting of himself in tight swim trunks or his bunny jammies weren’t _strictly_ honest either. “No. I couldn’t.”

“But you know, I think he’s jealous of Judy?” Davy bent to pick up a paper napkin and dropped onto a paper plate. He wouldn’t be shredding it. “He was glaring at her, man! And looking over at her all the time, when we were playing, or you were elsewhere, like he was keeping tabs on her?”

“My luck, he’s grooving on her. You know he goes for blondes. And even if you’re right, that he _was_ jealous, say, he’s still not ready to do anything about it!” Peter dropped his head onto the table.

“So, if you’ve given it your best shots, and still bugger all, maybe it’s time to forget it, mate.” Davy rubbed Peter’s shoulder. “Move on, you know?”

“I…dunno. Even if nothing comes of it, I have to be true to my feelings, you dig?” Peter tried to explain. “Not just…”

“_Mike!_”

The call came from within. “Sounds like Micky needs help. And we did say we’d play. Come on.” Davy stood.

Peter didn’t really want to. After the noise and crush of the party, even now it’d wound down to the die-hards, he felt more like curling up alone somewhere to smoke and have a beer with a mellow tune playing. Alone. But, he knew his duties as host. As a roommate. Although Micky seemed to be doing fine, showing off for the blonde, Kay, who’d come with Lorri, who’d come because Mike had asked her. Just as Davy seemed to be doing fine, more than, with his chick. A sudden wave of loneliness buffeted Peter and he second-guessed himself in having dismissed Judy’s overtures. What would be the harm?

“I think I’ve got it now.” Tess nodded earnestly at the table and the plastic cups of beer arranged in a circle, one before each person playing, and Peter suddenly realized that yes, she was a summer visitor, one he remembered from last July, when she’d been running around, pigtailed and tennis-shoed, with the other young kids on the beach. God, how old was she? Did Davy know? He tried to catch Mike’s eye, to see what he thought about this, but Mike was focused on the game, watching the competitors’ attempts to bounce the quarter into the big cup in the middle of the table. He couldn’t be that interested in a stupid table game. Anyone would think he was trying to avoid Lorri, the brunette he’d invited…

“Oooh, nearly!” Will, Toby’s brother, hit the table in frustration. “If I could just have another turn—”

“You can! This is Wild Quarters, San Fernando Valley rules!” Micky exclaimed. “Just shout ‘one more’!”

“One more!” Will called.

“And ya gotta pay the price…”

Peter closed his eyes against whatever forfeit Micky made the poor guy do to earn another attempt, and when he opened them, Mike was looking his way. “Hey, Mike?” Peter called across the table. “J had a message for you. Said to tell you something. What was it…” He picked up on a Mike tell. Not hard to do. “Oh, yes. ’Course. Good night. He said to say good night.”

“Peter!” Micky’s call was accompanied by the guy next to him shoving the quarter into his hand. Still eyeing Mike, Peter threw it down onto the table, to bounce it straight into the pot. Everyone cheered. “Mike,” Peter said, staring him in the eyes and tipping up his chin to show he meant Mike had to take a drink.

“I ain’t playing.” Mike held up his hands, palms out, glaring around at the boos and hisses. He withdrew more after that, and when Peter looked up after they’d all challenged Freddy, who’d hit the top rim of the glass and missed the shot, but then sunk his challenged one, meaning all the challengers had to drink, Mike was walking Lorri to the door.

“Oh, but the night is so young!” Micky protested, trying to hang on to Kay, who, it seemed, had to leave with Lorri, being her roommate and all. “And the drive is so long!”

Peter didn’t think the drive to just off Ventura Boulevard was _that_ long, and Micky’s arguments failed to sway the chicks, too, despite the entreaties that floated back into the pad from the front door, where Micky joined Mike in showing them out. Wild Quarters wound down without Micky propelling the game along, more people left, and Peter was showing Tess how to work the juke box when Mike came back in. His gaze swung over to Peter.

“What?” Peter asked, without thinking. Also without him meaning to, his feet walked him over to Mike. Or, more accurately, Mike met him halfway. “What?” he repeated, when Mike didn’t speak, then sighed. “I know. Keep an eye on Micky.”

“No— Well yeah, in general and as usual.”

It made Peter grin. “But what? What else, I mean?”

“No…nothing. Night.”

“Night,” Peter repeated, staring after Mike’s retreating figure, watching Mike look the other doors, then ascend the stairs. No, damn it, he thought, a rush of energy, of _something_ sweeping through him. This? _No._ He was going after Mike, knock on that coyly closing bedroom door and—

“Peter!” Micky, coming in after a rather long spell outside, grabbed his elbow. “Have you met Mindy? Our new summer neighbor? She was out walking her dog!”

Who Micky was now playing with, holding its little sausage body up to blow raspberries on its wriggly stomach. He stood very close to the tan blonde, drawing her close so they could both fawn over the animal.

“I haven’t been introduced to _Mindy_, no,” Peter replied, watching the woman stroke long fingernails over the back of Micky’s hand as both their hands petted the dog. “She was introduced to me as _Mrs._ Feinberg. The wife of Dr. Feinberg. He’s very busy at the hospital, right? Only able to join you for the occasional weekend over this summer vacation?” Peter had heard the gossip from Mrs. Purdy.

“And this is Leo!” Micky rubbed noses with the dachshund.

“Isn’t Leo…also Dr. Feinberg’s first name?” Peter asked.

“Yeah. Makes it easier to remember, ya know?”

Peter had the feeling she wasn’t referring to the dog.

“Oh, quarters?” Dog Leo tucked under one arm, Mindy sashayed farther in, her high heels click-clacking on the stone floor and Micky following her, drooling, his lower jaw nearly hitting the stone floor.

“It’s kind of winding down,” Peter said.

“Oh, ya know, I know a great party game?” Mindy shifted her gum to the other side of her mouth. “I learned it at the School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.”

“You…went to medical school?” Davy asked.

“What do you think?” Mindy scoffed. “You see a white coat and lace-up shoes, kid?”

“Well, I don’t!” Micky eyed her tight-fitting pedal pushers and tighter blouse appreciatively.

“But I never missed a med school party!” Mindy continued. “Ya’ll wanna learn this cool game? It’s called Secrets, Kisses, and Stripping.”

“And it’s already my favorite game. Heck, my favorite _thing_, _ever_!” Micky assured her.

_Your turn for Micky duty_, Davy’s raised eyebrow told Peter.

_But—_ Peter tried.

_Keep An Eye on Him_, Davy reminded him, and yes, Peter heard the command in a Texas accent, even though it was Davy directing it at him. And looking as though he was enjoying passing the buck just a little too much.

“But—” Peter tried out loud, to no avail. Davy had called shotgun on this, or ‘bagsied’ it, as he’d say. Peter sighed, not bothering to argue further. Any buzz he had from the dope earlier and the beer just now was gone as he managed to pull Micky aside a little from Mindy and the throng of whoever was left in the pad flocking to her. Micky seemed hypnotized by Mindy’s gold-painted nails flashing and dancing as she arranged the table, like the claws of a predator, and they drew Peter in too. He shook his head to clear it. “Micky, what about Deandra?” he asked.

“She’s not here, is she. Wait, she’s not _here_, is _she_? Like, come up behind me?” Micky froze until Peter shook his head.

“I mean, you went to her audition with her, to wish her luck and she got through to the next round and asked you to go again—”

“Exactly,” Micky butted in. “I’m just her good luck charm. Like a pixie from a cereal box to hang on a keyring, or a rubber pencil topper to take into a test.”

“I don’t think so, Mick. Now you've been kind of seeing her, I get the feeling things between you are—or could be—”

But Peter had no time for more, not when with a, “_Please!_” Micky dragged him into the game,

“So, we’re all sitting boy girl, boy girl…” Mindy checked the seated players, jammed close, Micky closest to her, jammed tight. “Now, ladies, take a shot…”

“I don’t think we’ve got spirits…oh.” Mindy did, in a hip flask, Peter saw, watching it pass around.

“And put lipstick on!” Mindy took out a tube of lipstick from her bag. The other four girls took out lip colors too, and primped with them.

“I love it so far!” Micky shivered as all the chicks pouted and smacked their lips.

“Then, put some on the guy next to you,” Mindy continued.

“Here.” Davy passed Micky the drink. “You’ll need a shot for this.”

Peter took a drink too as Mindy gave them all a number and put cards with the matching numbers face down on the table. “Now, y’all take a shot and tell a secret! Go around! I’ll start. I…can’t swim.”

_He’d better not…say anything…_ Davy stared at Peter.

_About her in-built floatation devices,_ Peter finished, crossing his fingers. He must have closed his eyes too, because he had to force them open, to see Micky staring at Mindy’s chest, but not saying anything. Well, it would be hard to, the way his jaw was hanging open.

Davy took his shot and his turn. “I don’t know the Pledge of Allegiance.”

Peter confessed to flunking out of college twice, Micky to running away to join the circus, Freddy to being scared of balls, while Tess ‘didn’t get’ the Rolling Stones. They started another round, and it was harder to remember so many pieces of information. Micky, of course, was the one to query what happened if he forgot one or made a mistake.

“Why, you get a kiss!” Mindy explained, smacking her lips at him.

Micky, of course again, flubbed his attempt. He breathed into his hand to check his breath and nodded in satisfaction. He firmed his lips and closed his eyes—

“Three,” said Mindy, tapping the card she’d just turned over from the line of them on the table.

“I’m three!” Will said. “Oh…”

“Pucker up, you two,” called Davy, grinning ear to ear.

“But I don’t wanna kiss from a _guy_,” Micky whined. “Wait. The game’s called Secrets, Kisses, and…”

“Yeah. Ya don’t wanna kiss, ya gotta strip something off,” Mindy explained, then whistled as Micky slipped his shirt over his head. “Way to go, babe! Another round?”

“Soon as I find the camera,” Davy said through his laughter, pointing at Micky attempting to cover his nipples with his elbows, which made his shoulders hunch around his ears.

The sight of Micky thinking, doing the math in his head, calculating the percentage play, the odds of a chick dropping a smacker on him; seeing two chicks kissing each other; how much he wanted both those things to happen versus the chance of having to peel off…

“His brain’s breaking!” Davy snorted. He pretended to waft away smoke coming from Micky’s ears. “Get you a desk calculator?” he offered. “Or a cine camera, maybe?”

Peter guessed the game was a little different when played by a huge group of raucous medical students eager to see chicks stripping off, and chicks happy to strip off for them, but this was plenty rowdy enough as it was. He glanced up the spiral stairs a few times, wondering if the noise would bring Mike down, but no. His head was a little muzzy when the game ended after a few more rounds, and he showed out the last guests, laughing at the sight of people going off into the night adorned with lip prints on their faces.

“Oi.” Davy’s soft call got Peter’s attention, and probably Micky’s too, where he was still outside. He tightened his arm over Tess’s shoulders. “I’m going to bed, fellas. Keep it down, yeah?”

“Bet _he_ won’t,” wafted in from beyond the front door, echoing Peter’s thoughts.

Davy had still been fully dressed and clean, whereas Peter had lost his shirt and was down to his pants. Micky must be cold, he mused. He examined himself in the bathroom mirror– one lipstick print. He wiped the tawny lipstick off his own lips, wondering if he’d be able to match it to the print on Micky’s face after. Exhausted, Peter changed into loose boxers and a tee and gathered what he needed.

God, the couch wasn’t fit for human habitation and was already occupied, by the small dog Mindy had left behind. God thing no one had sat on him. Peter placed a bowl of water to one side of him and Leo opened one eye and settled himself in a tighter circle on his cushion. Peter would have to take him back first thing tomorrow, before Micky claimed him as lost property, and exercised the right of finders’ keepers.

Switching lights off, he headed for the podium, where he let down the hammock fixed to the ceiling above and laid a blanket in it as a mattress, then climbed in and pulled a second cover over him. He’d almost forgotten the slight swing the hammock gave when you moved in it, and it took a second to adjust, to relax into the correlation between the movement inside the hammock and the corresponding one _of_ it. He assumed Micky had gone to bed, although he hadn’t seen him climb the stairs, and jumped to see him standing there, shivering in just his tight boxers and with several lipstick prints on his face.

“Can I get in?” Micky asked, with a pathetic shudder at the hammock.

“Put something on! You’ll make me freeze!” Peter replied.

Micky wandered off, to come back in a shirt and socks, neither of which were his. Well, they were now, Peter reasoned. He stilled the swinging by stretching a leg down to the floor when Micky climbed in. There was no point trying to move over—people sharing hammocks ended up in a huddle in the middle, where Peter recoiled from Micky’s icy hands and legs. He must’ve been outside for a while. Peter arranged the blanket over them, but felt Micky wriggling at his side.

“Something here… Oh.” Micky’s hand stuck up with a joint in it. “In the shirt pocket. And a match! Heh. Cool. Like when I go to bed drunk and when I wake up there’s like, a soda and aspirin on the nightstand, like drunk Micky was looking out for hungover Micky!”

“Or it’s Mike sneaking around taking care of us!” Peter thought that more likely and sniggered. He looked out at the pearlesque light outside, let it fill his vision and wondered if his pupils reflected it. The soft, muted gleam was balm after the lights of the party, just as the calm silence was restorative, after the clamor and buzz. Peter enjoyed it all, at its right time and in its right place.

Micky was still holding up the match. “How does Mike light a match with his thumb?”

“He’s Prometheus.”

“Really? Ya think? I wouldn’t thay he thleepth around.” Micky didn’t miss a beat. “Hold on…”

He meant it literally, Peter discovered, when Micky rocked the hammock so it swung in an arc, then a wider one, so that when it neared the ground, he could reach down and use the motion of the hammock to strike the match against the wooden boards of the bandstand under them. It took three swings, each one taking Peter’s stomach with it and turning it over in a way that the hammock thankfully wasn’t.

“You could just’ve leaned down and moved your hand to strike the damn match, you know,” Peter said, his voice faint.

“Oh yeah! Well, you live an’ you learn, huh.” Micky lit the joint, passing it to Peter to hold. Peter settled him down again, pulling him into his side, Micky’s head on his shoulder. Micky felt all even sharper angles and points this evening, his chin particularly, when he turned his head to take a hit from the joint. Peter had rarely had such mild pot. It felt like a starter strain, or a mid-morning mellower.

“Ash before you pass.” Micky groped below him for an ashtray and placed it on Peter’s navel.

“Thanks for that.” Peter rolled his eyes.

“_De nada_.”

A soft tune came on—the juke box must have been acting up again, with a delay between punching in the record’s numbers and the disc starting.

“Like the first time,” Micky murmured.

“Yeah.” It seemed a longer time ago than almost two years. The things they’d gone through, their closeness, the light and the music—it all pressed down on Peter and made him ask, “Micky, you’ve got a chance with Deandra. Why are you messing it up?”

Micky ground his chin down for a painful moment, burrowing deeper. “I dunno, man. Except, messing stuff up…it’s what I do.”

Oh. _Okay…_ “I’m not saying you have to get serious or go steady, but try asking her out on some real dates, not just showing up at the same clubs she goes to? You two seem a nice fit.”

He waited, but Micky remained a stubborn, unmoving weight at his side. “Micky, it’s time, you know.” He nudged Micky’s face up, to rip him a hit from the joint into his mouth, for old time’s sake, then kissed him, explaining without words. He saw the second understanding…and acceptance…dawned in Micky’s eyes.

“Dear Abby…” Micky said, but didn’t mock. “And is it time for you, too? With Judy?”

“No.” Peter felt he should hire a billboard to get his message across. “We could be friends. Nothing more.”

“Maybe this is a job for Ann Landers…”

“What?”

“I dunno. Just that Judy chick seems…a bit intense, maybe?”

“Maybe. Maybe she just needs to loosen up. I don’t know.” He understood Micky was deflecting.

“Hey, Peter, show me—”

“No. No showing. Telling. And you telling me something.” He endured the stabs and digs as Micky levered up to look at him.

“What?” Micky asked.

Peter remembered the half of his family Micky had talked about the first time they’d fooled around, and thought about the half he didn’t really talk about.

“Something meaningful,” Peter answered, dismissing the stupid admissions of the game earlier.

_My dad._ The topic swept up on them a beat before Micky said, “I’m angry at my dad for dying. Supid, right?”

“No emotion is stupid.”

“I loved him so much.”

“You still love him.” Their back and forth copied the to and fro of their bodies, suspended in the net and swaying just slightly above the ground. Penned-in, weighed down, yet weightless, somehow.

“Yeah.” Micky grinned. “He was my hero. I know, be a hero to yourself, right? But…Peter, I wish you could have met him. I wish I could’ve shown you his movies. We had a room, I guess it was a store room, or a stable, maybe, old stone, and Dad made it like a kinda cinema, with a sound projector and screen and we had reels of his old movies, and the couple Mom was in too!”

Peter had forgotten Micky’s mom had been a starlet. She’d still made a few movies even after marrying Micky’s dad. “Had?”

“Yeah. After— Mom sold all the equipment and gave the movies to Dad’s studio for their archives. I was mad about that. Then she made over the room, a couple rooms, into a small apartment and rented it out. Dad had a share in a restaurant and she sold that, to his partners. It seemed she was erasing him.”

“Erasing him?” Peter recoiled at the sharp look Micky shot him when he phrased Micky’s last two words as a question. Seemed he knew that trick. “But she wasn’t, right?”

“No. It was all to do with finances. I get it. I don’t blame her. I’m just angry and sad she had to do that, that things had to change, that I couldn’t, I dunno, magically be an adult and do something to make everything stay the same. But that’s not what life is, is it? Not what it’s for, what it’s about.”

“No. Just as it’s not about staying a kid for ever either.” He squeezed Micky tighter to him and kissed the top of his head, through his curls, making Micky giggle. He thought about how Micky loved it when one of his dad’s movies came on TV, how they all had to shush and watch.

“Hey, how about we book a session to view one of his movies, at the studio? I think there’s a membership-type program where you join and can request showings? I know they rent out movie reels to film courses and social clubs at colleges and I think they put on private screenings for small groups of affiliates with an interest. I can check it out.”

“_Really?_ Yeah!”

“We can all go. Like, once a month. And if it needs a bigger group, for the request, we’ll get more friends in on it. A fan club!” _And a different way of viewing._ Peter tried not to squirm when Micky scrunched his face into Peter’s chest to wipe his eyes.

“Tell me something,” came from the depths of Peter’s t-shirt.

“About my father?” Peter stubbed the joint out. “I’m angry at him, sure, for being The Man. But that’s not what you mean.” Like a kid, Micky was growing heavier on Peter, his body powering down. He tried to look up, but his eyes were closing.

“I’m hung up on someone. Real hung up. Real bad,” Peter whispered, to the almost sleeping Micky, to the quiet of the night.

“Judy?” Micky rallied. “No. If not Judy, who-dy? See what I…did there…” came slowly.

“Don’t ask.”

“Okay. Won’t. Do I know h…them?”

“Micky, yes. Now stop.”

“You’re serious.” Micky forced his eyes open. “And that’s why we can’t fool around anymore.”

Peter cuddled Micky to him, grabbing at the ashtray to stop it spilling. “Yes. But I love you, man.”

“I know. And I know it’s Mike.” After that bombshell, Micky took the ashtray, but couldn’t reach over Peter to place it on the floor that side, or bend his arm enough to place it on his side. He tried to roll over, onto his back, and tipped the hammock down, overbalancing it so he rolled out to hit the floor with a tremendous thump.

The echoes seemed to take a while to die down. Micky hadn’t moved or spoken and Peter wondered how much time had passed. “Mick?” He prodded down with his foot and got soft stomach.

“Huh?” came up groggily. “Everyone’s gone? Musta fallen asleep. Better get t’bed.” Micky stood and staggered to the stairs. A low-hanging string of popcorn brushed his hair and he grabbed at it, pulling it free to drop around his neck like a lei.

“Night, Micky,” Peter called over.

Micky turned toward his voice, but stopped. “That’s…not you on the couch, right? I didn’t do that?”

Peter didn’t get how Micky thought he could have turned Peter into a dog, but… “No. I’m here.”

“G’d.” Micky resumed his trek.

_Good. Yes._ Things were, here, now, at this time and in this place and with the four of them—a temporary five, if you counted Leo—even if nothing came of things with Mike…although Peter thought something would…and soon.

“Love you,” Peter said again, to the household in general and one member in particular, just before he fell asleep.


End file.
